


Porcelain

by facade



Series: Beautiful Minds [2]
Category: Football RPF, Original Work
Genre: AU: Behavioral Health Facility, Adultery, Androgynous Character (w/o biological intersex physicality), Childhood Trauma, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Extramarital Affairs, Group Therapy Sessions, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Individual Therapy Sessions, Infidelity, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Mental Institutions, Past Sexual Abuse, Psychological Trauma, Questionable Consent Due to Mental Instability, Schizophrenia, Therapy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-02-06 22:39:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 30,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1875087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/facade/pseuds/facade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..”</em><br/>― John Milton, Paradise Lost</p><p>  <strong>Inspired by <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/guilty-after-sixyear-trial-portugals-highsociety-paedophile-ring-2070112.html">Houses of the Pious</a> by Jerome Taylor.</strong></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Excerpt: Fireflies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SamUYell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SamUYell/gifts), [PenguinBowTie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenguinBowTie/gifts).



> **Please read the tags as this fiction contains extremely strong, triggering content.** The entire fiction as a whole is not "underage" and was heavily inspired by an older news article. I have cited it in my inspirations for this fiction in the hopes that it may shed some insight into where this is going.

_He can still smell of the fragrance of the damp earth entwining with the smell of the wet bark of the trees, he can still see the little gray rain clouds drifting away with the light breeze, and he can still hear the snapping of the twigs as he made his way through the wooded area of a backyard -- his backyard. A warm hand held his and a soft, yet husky voice, still whispers to him “come on son, we’re almost there, I promise”. He isn’t his son though. He can’t remember much but he knew, he knows that he isn’t the son of this man, but the warmth… He can still feel the warmth of that hand as his fingers lay trustingly within its grasp. A smile had been painted on the face of that man, on a face whose other features had been blown out by the rays of a bright sun going down directly behind the man, and he can’t seem to recall the details – could never. He can still see and hear the little lightening bugs fluttering around him, and he could still feel that single firefly land on the back of his hand, can still feel it dancing in circles as it made its way from his knuckle to his wrist and back to his knuckles again - knuckles to wrist, wrist to knuckles, and back..._

_They’re almost there now. He can still sense it in the pit of his stomach. He can see the little shack coming into view just a few feet away from where they were, he can still see those shutters, coated with faded and peeling red paint, drooping from off the side of the ‘barn’, nearly touching the mud just below. He can still see that rust-stained tin roof and he can still see that brown rusted wheel leaning up against the rotting boards of the shack’s walls, can still see water droplets dripping from off each of its spokes. The grass was high and the path to the barn was overgrown with weeds but the man, the man holding his hand firmly within his grasp who called him 'son', he pulled him through it all with ease. Sometimes, he can still feel those sandspurs hook onto the threading of his pants and, as he glanced down to examine the plush animal in his other hand, he can still feel the furrow of his own brow as he finds some of those sandspurs clinging to that red ribbon bow tied around his friend bear’s neck. He plucks off all that he finds until he is pulled further still. He can still feel a few of those same sandspurs stabbing at his legs to this day but he could feel them fall back to the earth as he was pulled further and further into the high grass, as he was pulled closer and closer towards the run-down barn._

_The squeaking sound of the rusted hinges on those sun-bleached wooden doors and the image of the bales of hay stacked high in the corner, the sound of the man chuckling and asking him what he thought of it all, what he thought someone named 'Rafa' would think of it. He can still feel the little firefly suddenly still its pace, no longer dancing in circles, can still feel the little legs of the firefly slowly making their way up his arm to dance at the nape of his neck... Bales of hay suddenly underneath him, his jacket sliding against his arms just before it falls to the hay straw covered soil, the comfort of a plush bear leaving his grasp. Little lightening bugs crawling up his spine, across his chest, down his tummy, down, down, down… Sudden and complete darkness consumes the memory, ink blots cover the man and his smile, cover the barn and the bales of hay, cover him and the bear with the red ribbon. A sea of ebony surrounds him and engulfs him, drowns and revives him, drowns and revives him but the little lightening bugs still dance across his skin. Nothing and everything surrounds him. Nothing and everything consumes him._

_The ink blots disappear as the page of the memory turns and he can still feel the straws of hay poking at his bare flesh from beneath him, he can still feel the burning from the dryness of his eyes and he knows that he’s cried but he couldn’t possibly know why. He can feel a burning sensation somewhere, something on him hurts… Everything is blurring together. Everything blurs but he can see, he can make out a pink and orange sky through the cracks of the termite ridden boards that come together to form a wall, can see an orange sun starting to fall just outside of them. He can still see the back of the man’s head as he can still hear him repeatedly saying that he was "a good boy" just as a firefly landed on his thigh to dance. It's that dusty lofted area he remembers most of all, that dusty lofted area with little legs hanging over the edge of it, that dusty loft with dirty, miniature stockings and mudded little faces peeking over it… It was the last thing he saw before the darkness returned – their faces, each and every one of them, their blue, gray, green, brown eyes of glass watching him… but it was those soft porcelain smiles – those unwavering curves that never faded, that never faltered – that haunted him._

_Porcelain smiles spread beneath rosy cheeks, held high above those dirty stockings and Sunday's finest, haunting him… just before everything turns to black once more._


	2. Afraid?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“We’re all scared of something, Mr. Ramos, but we’re rarely afraid of the same thing. Some of us are scared of the dark, some of us fear what’s in the dark more. Some of us are scared of a plausible lunatic on floor ten and some of us fear failing to get through to the plausible lunatic's sense of sanity. Some of us fear finding ourselves in a position where we can’t help a person in need and some of us fear finding ourselves needed at all.”_

Sergio yawned as the television flickered back and forth between static and some news broadcast covering the latest celebrity gossip; he didn’t care much for Justin what's his name's latest antics – in truth, he didn’t care for him at all – but he had arrived fifteen minutes too early for his shift, and protocol demanded that he clock in no earlier than ten minutes prior to his stint, so there he was. “Shame on you, Justin.” In the spirit of truth, if you were to ask, he’d readily inform you that he had never envisioned pulling security detail at the Broken Arrow Behavioral Health Institute as a career option when he had first gone to the police academy – it was nowhere near even his top ten aspirations – but the prospect of potentially having to kill a person in the line of duty had eventually became too much for him to handle; he had simply preferred the idea of protecting people without the possibility of having to be the one to harm them. So, there he was, waiting to protect people from themselves while listening to static and shaming a Justin. It wasn’t long until he spotted a white coat making its way across the lot, forcing him to check his watch – ((right on time)) – and it was enough to draw out a smile.

“Good evening, Mr. Ramos,” the good-looking therapist sung as he slipped in through the sliding glass doors, “I hope all is well with you?” He threw his suitcase on the chair opposite of Sergio as he made his way towards the back wall to make himself a cup of coffee. Sure, it was probably stale and forget looking for cream within that refrigerator but he needed coffee and – he quickly checked his watch – he was late at being early. He had been up all the night before and for most of that day reading through the file of his “newest patient”, sweating over the details and the lack of, trying to come up with a more effective treatment plan than what had already been attempted. His “newest patient” had already been there for over ten year, had gone through several therapists and recovery specialists all to no avail, and his file was sparse, to say the very most. If that hadn’t been enough, he had been informed by the director of the institute that he had only been brought in as a “Hail Mary” of sorts for this patient, that his patient was a person brandished as a “lost cause” by all but his benefactors – and that was enough for the facility to continue attempting various treatments regardless of cost. He, however, had never believed in the idea of a “lost cause”, no, such things didn’t exist; there are only lost people within his profession and that only became a problem when such people refused to be found, when they didn’t want to be found. Looking over the file, that is what he feared the most about this new patient of his… Perhaps he had found more comfort in his own absence than he could ever find in his presence. “I hear congratulations are in order, or something of the sort. I hear you’ll be working the tenth floor starting on the day.”

Sergio drew his brows together in disbelief as the words of the psychiatrist found him, shaking his head as he failed to make sense of the sentiment. The tenth floor was a restricted one, was the only floor within the institute that could not be accessed by way of the elevators; you would have to take the stairwell from either floor nine or floor eleven and, even then, you would need a specialized card key, a red badge to gain access to the floor – you could never get out of the stairwell or off of the floor otherwise – and there were exactly three card keys: one badge for the assigned therapist, one badge for the anesthesiologist only to be used in the event of an emergency, and one for whomever happened to be running security detail (i.e., not him). “I’m not running the tenth floor. It’s restricted and there’s only one guard who can be assigned to that floor – it’s a permanent assignment and there’s no vacation time for whomever is running it. I don’t even have the clearance to run security on the seventh floor, let alone the tenth floor.” He shook his head one final time and stared at the backside of the doctor for a moment as he awaited a response, applying every ounce of his willpower to keep his sights above waist level before finally having realized that the slightly older doctor had become distracted. “Doctor Aveiro?”

Shaking his head at himself, he turned and started to make his way over towards where the security guard was, sipping on his coffee just before he rushed out a short apology. “I’m sorry, I thought you… Your boss pushed out something of a memorandum early this morning announcing your promotion. He rambled on about you for a bit, sang more than a few of your praises before he changed up your assignment and delegated you to the tenth floor in the place of…” he trailed as he flipped through a few of his papers, clicking his tongue as he searched for the name of the man Sergio was meant to replace, “…a one Gerard Pique.” He took a bite out of the sinful donut he had snagged and stole a glance of the younger man, frowning as he found the Andalucían plagued with worry. “Everything is going to be perfectly fine,” he reassured the other as he gently squeezed his shoulder, “there’s only one patient on the tenth floor. One.” He allowed himself a smile as he heard the guard release a sigh of relief, chuckling as he thought of every other floor within the facility. “You have to admit that one patient sounds too good to be true when you think of those floors with thirty or forty but I’m telling you, it’s true. Those days of working and dealing with the Women’s Recovery Units are in the past now and, to be honest, I couldn’t be more relieved.” He had forgotten that he had still been holding the shoulder of the other and he used this, used the other’s laughter as the perfect distraction, as the means to finally remove it, and he mirrored the smile he found beneath bright, almond eyes. “Besides, if anyone should be worried, it should be the therapist. I hear it’s his first day on the tenth floor, as well.”

…and this, this is what would eventually end him, he’d swear by it. Just standing there, staring into the glimmering brown eyes of this man, struggling to maintain his composure, struggling in keeping the rest of himself from melting away along with his still-beating heart in the face of such kindness, such empathy. Typically, the therapists of the institute seldom spoke with anyone who wasn’t identified as a patient, as a fellow therapist of some sort, or as the director of the institute… but Cristiano had always been a bit different. The doctor had always gone out of his way to speak with everyone, to know everyone, and Sergio was willing to be that it was probably the reason why he seemed to know more than everyone. He remembered his first interaction with him rather clearly:

> _He had been falling behind on his mother’s medical bills, had needed to pick up a few extra shifts, and he had readily volunteered to take up Javi’s offer of his own slot on the fifth floor as the former had started feeling squeamish and wouldn’t be able to see his double through. There had been chatter amongst the doctors and the security forces that there had been a new doctor recently transferred from Portugal to handle “a pretty tough case” but he tended to “blend” in with the patients due to his age, something Sergio couldn’t believe when he had finally caught sight of the young doctor on the fifth floor – he most definitely stood out. He had been working with one of the lengthier inpatients, with a man who had been committed twice before and who would remain until he could appropriately cope with his depression as medications were now out of the question – unlike baseball, it was only two strikes until you’re out. “Javi and Busqets had been telling me that he’s been rather social today, though he’s made no significant behavioural adjustments. I think we’re going to have to keep a closer eye on him as these patients… They tend to step outside of their disorders, they’ll kind of press pause on their dysfunction just before they suffer some kind of a collapse, a complete meltdown of sorts. Watch him for me, will you Mr… Ramos?” He doesn’t know if it was the way that the Portuguese accent of the other played with his name, wasn’t sure if it was because a doctor had actually used his name as opposed to shouting “you” and pointing, if it was because of the way he looked at him… but he had watched him, had kept more than eye on the patient. He had watched as the patient had conversed with nearly every person who walked past his room, had watched as he had laughed and smiled, had listened as he had called his loved ones from the call center…. had rushed into the room and had been the one who had cut the man’s neck free of a knotted bedsheet before he could exit this life by way of asphyxiation._

 He doesn’t know if it was the way that the Portuguese accent of the other played with his name, if it was because of the way he looked at him after he had examined his patient… but he had developed something of a crush on the therapist immediately after, had found himself fawning over both his intellect and his compassion, had found himself charmed by his laugh and by the ripples of his abs that tended to show when he wore that one fitted, white, button-up. He did his best to suppress his desires – he would force himself into distraction if he stared for too long, would ground himself with a flaw when his imagines started to run wild – but it had become harder with the passage of time. Still, he never fooled himself; Cristiano was an elite professional – Broken Arrow wouldn’t have flown him in from Portugal if he had been anything less – and while Sergio may not be as intelligent as the doctors he had been surrounded by, he was smart enough to know that ‘interoffice dating’ was far from professional, much less realistic for the dynamic he desired.

The small smile that currently held the features of the therapist certainly wasn’t helping with the aching feeling within his heart, though, and he could feel the blood rushing out from within his chest, rising to paint the highs of his cheekbones as he coyly asked the other who the doctor on the tenth floor might be.

* * *

 

Sergio could feel his heart pounding wildly within his chest as the elevator came to a halt, opening its doors to reveal a quiet ninth floor. It was lunchtime but he was grateful for the silence, grateful for the doctor just beside him because he swore he could faint within any given moment. He watched as Cristiano stepped out before him, found himself incapable as he felt a bead of sweat break away from his hairline, felt it trickle down and past his cheeks to drip off the point of his chin. “Doctor Aveiro,” and he hated how his own voice found him, but Cristiano had been reaching for the doors that led into the stairwell and, if not now – never. He subconsciously placed his trembling hand on the butt of his gun and bit his bottom lip as the psychiatrist turned to meet his questioning gaze. “I know you’re probably going to judge me for this – I mean, it’s kind of your job to judge – but, do you ever, you know, get nervous before you…?” He didn’t know why he was so nervous; there had been rumours about the patient on the tenth floor, sure – that he’s a serial killer who had plead insanity had always been the most famous – but nothing had ever been said that would ever deter anyone from venturing to the floor… but he felt uncomfortable with the fact that a taser hadn’t been enough to run detail on the tenth floor, uncomfortable with the fact that he needed an actual, loaded gun within his holster to “properly secure” the floor.

Releasing the handle with a sigh and a small smile, Cristiano made his way over to where Sergio had been standing and leaned against the wall opposite, crossing both his legs and his arms as he remained upright. “If a gun were being held to my head, if I were forced into complete honesty, I’d tell you that the only reason why my insides aren’t spilled out before you is because I don’t want you to think less of me,” he chuckled out as Sergio seemed to relax at the sound of the confession. “I can’t tell you much about the patient due to patient confidentiality but I can tell you that he’s not dangerous. He’s never hurt anyone or anything outside of himself; it can even be argued that he didn’t harm himself, per say. The only reason he has his own floor is because his biological parents are extremely wealthy – I mean, filthy rich – and they wanted him in a private area as they felt it proper given the nature of his affliction. They speak money, same language as this board of directors, and here we are. That’s it, nothing to worry about.” He nodded his head as Sergio accepted the counsel he offered, started making his way back towards the stairwell with the Spaniard in his shadow. “Think of it this way: you were just promoted to a higher paying job that requires significantly less work. That’s the stuff of dreams.”

Sergio smiled as he felt the doctor playfully slap him on the arm, silently grateful that Cristiano would be working the floor with him. “…then what are you so nervous about,” he asked as he walked beyond the doctor to hold the door open for him. “If there’s nothing threatening about him, nothing maniacal or dark, then why do you feel like vomiting, Cri… Doctor Aveiro?”

Cristiano smiled, more to himself than anything, and pushed beyond the broad-shouldered guard as he started to make his way up the stairwell. “We’re all scared of something, Mr. Ramos, but we’re rarely afraid of the same thing. Some of us are scared of the dark, some of us fear what’s in the dark more. Some of us are scared of a plausible lunatic on floor ten,” he laughed out as he threw a mischievous glance over his shoulder, finding the guard smiling at his jab, “and some of us fear failing to get through to the plausible lunatic's sense of sanity. Some of us fear finding ourselves in a position where we can’t help a person in need and some of us fear finding ourselves needed at all.”

“I guess we have some of the same fears then, Doctor Averio.”


	3. Excerpt: Bare Walls

_He can still recall the feeling of the soft sheets pressing against his skin, can easily remember thinking that this, this definitely beat the feeling of the rough carpet he usually fell asleep nestled against – they were as soft as silk, as smooth as butter, and he hadn’t wanted to awaken from the dream, from the sleep he must have slipped into. He remembered thinking that he'd have sheets like those one day, that he’d have sheets like those when he was older, that every bedroom in his home would be adorned with soft sheets like those. He couldn’t recall the ‘why’ of the matter, couldn’t remember why he was just lying there, why he was purely watching as each blade of the ceiling fan slowly moved past him to simply come back around again, but he can still remember the feeling of the light draft it created, can remember feeling it move through his hair. The light breeze tickled his scalp, wringing light, carefree giggles from the part of his lips and he remembers the sounds, sounds that were once his, bouncing off the walls around him to surround him. The room felt warm… even though those walls, the walls were completely bare, the walls themselves were cold. He couldn’t recall seeing any pictures hanging from any of the nails that stuck out of the wall, couldn’t recall seeing a single cross or calendar, but nails… There had been nails sticking out of that wall._

_He can’t remember much about that home… but he knows that it wasn’t his, was never meant to be his._

_He can still hear the buzzing of the season’s cicadas as they had found a home of their own just outside of the room’s singular window and he can still hear the chirping of the crickets as their songs snuck into the house with the rhythmic flashing of the lightening bugs by way of the three-inch opening of the window. He had hummed with their songs, had found which of the lightening bugs flashed in perfect time with the sounds, but the little lights eventually faded with the sounds. He can still remember vowing to himself that he’d catch those bugs one day, that one day he’d capture the light in a jar and he’d never let it go. He reached, and reached, and reached, only to be set back as a moth snuck inside. He can still remember the fear that built from within himself as that insect fluttered about the bulb of the lamp just beside himself; he had always hated moths, had gone so far as to call them the evil twin of the butterfly when he was young – younger than he had been at the time, that is. He watched as it flitted about and struggled within the shade, watched as it flew erratically and seemingly without direction, watched as it eventually escaped its own, self-inflicted chaos and wondered…_

_He can still make out the shadow of the man growing ever larger as the sounds of his footsteps grew ever closer. He recalls grinning as two of the lightening bugs aligned themselves in a position where he had supposed the man’s eyes would have been, but he recalls swallowing that laughter upon hearing the man grunt. He still can’t say why he had done that – why the man had grunted – nor does he know why that was one of the things he had chosen to remember, what about that sound had been deemed as significant by his mind… but he knew that the grunt of that man had prevented his smile from growing any larger. He watched, seemingly transfixed on the dark space, as the shadow grew and continued to do so until he found himself lying in the complete shade of the other figure, the light no longer painting a shadow as he became consumed by the darkness._

_He can still feel the weight of another body sinking into the bed just beside him, at times, always a body much heavier than his own, and he can still feel himself tremor. He can’t tell you why he trembles from the tips of his fingers all the way down to his toes because, the truth is, he’ll probably never know why. He can still hear the — clicking — sound of the light being turned off, can still see the light completely surrender to the darkness just before he could see no more. He can still smell the breath of that other man – is still plagued by his peppermint breath and the stench of tobacco, can still smell the fragrance of his cheap coconut body wash and his musky aftershave entwining – as he feels fireflies starting to land softly against his flesh…_

_The images are gone, jet black lines of ink that only grow thicker and thicker remain in their wake. It’s all he remembers, truly. It’s all that is during. He’d always said that they had stained his memory, that they had merely distorted the colour of an image that had never been put into focus to begin with, that inky lines took any and all of the detail leaving him with nothingness. Once again, he had found himself surrounded by nothing and everything. Once again, he had found himself consumed by everything and nothing. The memory fades with the passing of time and the next, the next come as vivid as the ones before._

_He can still remember waking up in that room, surrounded by those cold, bare walls, waking to the sudden chill of the air surrounding him. The walls aren’t the only things left empty. He can still feel that burning sensation – a reminder that someone had been there – lingering on the surface of his cheek, yet piercing deeper than any bruise ever could. He couldn’t remember what he had done, what he hadn’t done to have warranted such a violent act but he knew that, somewhere, in the back of his mind, he had done something to deserve the bloom painting his cheek. He can still taste the blood that had stained his lips and tongue. He can still hear himself apologizing for being, what the man had claimed him to be, “a bad, bad boy.”_

 


	4. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Everything seemed to have a place within that room and everything seemed to be in it – seemed. Cristiano’s eyes darted from one room to the next, from one space to the next, looking, searching for the one thing that didn’t belong – the resident of this room._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Editing-

As he stepped out of the stairwell and made his way onto the floor, Sergio frowned as he took in his surroundings for the first time, though he was far from disappointed – rather, he was delightfully surprised to find that the floor was nothing like he had initially expected. While it was like most floors in that it had been constructed with a visitor’s area, everything else about the floor didn’t quite fit within the image of the Broken Arrow. The floor was constructed of wood as opposed to the standard tile, the chairs that typically lined the halls and adorned the visiting area had been removed in the favour of a sectional and various sofas; reading chairs had been placed just outside of the room entrances and even the floor’s televisions had been updated and seemed to be equipped with latest satellite packaging, forget standard cable. The visitor’s area took it all a step further as it was equipped with a non-alcoholic bar and a refrigerator chocked full of snacks, drinks, and fresh produce alike. An office filled one of the rooms – a few mouse clicks and a few buttons pressed, a test page informing him that (1) it takes him longer to blink than it does for these pages to load and (2) this family is spending a fortune to keep their relative comfortable – and a gaming room seemed to occupy the room just beside that one, a library next door to that, and so on, it seemed. “Ridiculous.”

Sergio was about to ‘test out’ the microwave when he managed to catch sight of Cristiano’s still form out of the corner of his eye; he seemed to be standing in front of one of the doors, seemed to be tracing the number on the faceplate in something of a trance. “Doctor Aveiro? Are you doing alright over there?” The furrow of his brows only deepened ever further as Cristiano seemed to snap out of whatever it was that had caught him up but he allowed himself to relax a bit as the therapist flashed him a quick view of his pearly whites. He watched closely as the other man nodded, though he still seemed to be distracted by something, before he redirected his attentions on the other doors that were spread along the edges of the corridor. “Are you absolutely positive that there’s only one patient on this floor? This all seems a bit, I don’t know, large to be playing host to only one patient. I know that families can be excessive when it comes to having someone placed in these facilities but this seems – wrong. I mean, there are floors just below this one that are having issues with crowding but there’s nothing but empty space up here.”

Tearing his gaze away from the number one thousand thirty-three, tearing his eyes away from the number inscribed on the faceplate of the door, tearing his heart away from the memory, he nodded as he found the security guard wandering down the hall, silently watching as the other seemingly counted any and all of the other doors he happened upon out of sheer curiosity. “It does seem like a waste of space,” he supposed aloud, “having all of these empty rooms when there’s plenty of people to fill them twice, thrice over just three floors below.” He looked back down at the file within his grasp, took in his surroundings for the second or third time. “I guess the pay bracket of yourself and your family will come into play in every aspect of your life, even when your health is concerned.” It’s always been something that has bothered him: how monetized the health field is and has been, that he would find himself inaccessible to those who needed him most on the mere premise of their wage and standard of living, that some would find the medications their very lives would depend on to be out of their reach due to the quality of their insurance… Meanwhile, some little girl who couldn’t stand hearing a ‘no’ from her mommy and daddy could cry, could threaten to off herself with the absence of intent simply because it was another way to get what she wanted from her parents, and she’d find herself on a floor such as this one, with a private therapist such as himself. As a matter of fact, she’d been on the seventh floor as sure as he stood there. “It’s a shame, truly, but it stops surprising you after you’ve seen the disparity for so long.”

The Spaniard frowned and furrowed his brows together as he turned to make his way back to where the doctor had been standing. “What about you, Cristiano,” he asked, carefully enunciating each syllable of the Portuguese name. “Does the disparity end with the facility or does it bleed into the quality of care? Is there a ‘disparity’ in the way that you would treat your patients?” He held no doubt that his question was offensive in nature, was challenging, and could very much see him fired. Hell, he wouldn’t have been surprised had the good doctor nailed him on the back of the head for having posed such questions… but he knew better than most that the root cause of the problems within healthcare system fell as much in the hands of greedy doctors as they did in the hands of avaricious corporations. Perhaps he was simply looking for that flaw, for that problematic aspect of Cristiano’s character that would ground his steamy imagines, but he knew one too many doctors – doctors of Cristiano’s caliber, no less – who had turned patients away due to an inability to pay for services rendered in full. “How many have you…” he clicked his tongue, swung his booted foot forward, “…kicked to the curb?”

He was as much his own patient as floor ten, had to talk himself down as Sergio’s tone had shifted drastically and suddenly, and yet he understood the nature of the question. It was logical. It made sense. It was just. He smiled softly and shook his head, though not in disbelief, in answer to Sergio’s questions. “I treat anyone who finds their way to my door, to my practice. I don’t know anything about the obstacles that stand between my door and their closed fist but I seldom turn patients in need away. Can I tell you something,” and he didn’t know why he had wanted to tell Sergio one of his secrets, he simply wanted to and the fluttering within his chest, the fluttering spurred on by Sergio’s heartening smile only invigorated his desire to do so.  “You need to know that I can lose my medical license for what I’m about to tell you,” but the chuckled reply of the Sevillan was enough to propel him further into his confession. “I have one of my patients enrolled on my health insurance plan as a dependent of mine – I found a loophole within my contract that enabled the process – and I pay for over twenty of my patients’ prescriptions out of my own pocket. I mean, sure, most of them are only around forty bucks a month but…” He shrugged as he found Sergio’s mouth in the shape of an ‘O’, smiling as his cheeks flushed to a crimson red. He didn’t know why he had just confessed to doing such a thing to the man running security detail on his floor, didn’t know why he had wanted to impress this man, why he had put himself in such a vulnerable position… “I mean, if you think about it, every patient of mine can be viewed as a dependent of mine. Not financially but, if not for me, how would they survive? They rely on me to assist them in getting their lives back, in finding independent lives of their own – they depend on me in that way, you know? I just don’t think I could ever live with the guilt of knowing that there was something...” Cristiano trailed as his mind took him back to Portugal, back to that house, to the house on lot one thousand thirty-three, frowning as he saw two ghosts playing in a vacant lot of dirt and rock just beside the image of a home. It was how he had always remembered it: the white paint peeling from the wooden panels, those light blue shutters flapping lightly within the Portuguese breeze, that little wind chime hanging over the porch allowing the songs of the wind to be heard by anyone willing to listen…

He shook away the memory as it started to progress, quickly turning his attention back to the thin file within his hands.

It was impossible to miss the lapse in the doctor’s concentration as he seemed to be present elsewhere, in another time, with another person. His lips had fallen to form a wistful frown, his gaze seemed weighted in sadness or loss, and it took everything within Sergio to keep himself from reaching out, from snatching the hand of the other man in an act of comfort. He had seemed lost, confused, and Sergio wondered… You see, his mother had always told him that some people became ‘healers as they needed to be healed themselves’, that people became ‘protectors as they had needed to be protected’, and that those that would often help people, ‘helped because they needed to be helped’. “We become the change we need to see,” she would so often quote, “so pay attention to the things that people give away generously, my love… because that is what they need more of in their life.” It had always seemed ironic when she had said it, contradictory in nature, but as he had watched Cristiano card through that flimsy file once more, he couldn’t help but wonder what had happened in Cristiano’s life, what had pushed him into becoming a psychiatrist – what or who was responsible for that expression on his face. He’d never ask – not on the day, at least – as Cristiano was preparing to interview ‘The Recluse of the Tenth Floor’, but the question remained, unvoiced yet present. “Are you sure you’re going to be alright in there?” His question was whispered, voice as unsure as the other appeared to be, yet he restrained himself from letting on much more in the way of concern. “I can always escort you on the initial, just to make sure that the two of you feel comfortable with one another before you dive into the nitty gritty, invasive crap.”

Snapping his head up as the guard’s voice broke through the silence of the floor, Cristiano slowly nodded his head. “I’m just not used to dealing with patients that have been in the facilities for more than a few years, you know? I can never be too sure of how to approach them, how many ways they’ve been approached, what’s been said…” he glanced back down at the thin file and frowned, “...if anything had been said at all.” He rubbed at the back of his neck with his free hand but noticed something in the file he had never noticed before, something that could prove to be crucial in finally communicating with this institute ordained ‘recluse’. “I would appreciate an escort though, just in case he doesn’t take to me immediately, but only if that would be okay with you, Mr. Ramos?” He found Sergio’s brown eyes and smiled as the guard quickly nodded and placed a reassuring hand on his taser. “Is that in case he doesn’t take to you too well, Sergio,” he asked cautiously as he noticed the sudden, yet subtle jump in the guard’s stance. “Is it okay if I call you by your first name, Sergio? I mean, after all, if you and I are going to be spending more than sixteen hours a day with one another, we’re going to have to drop the pleasantries sooner or later. I’d just much rather sooner.” He chuckled as he caught the Spaniard nodding his head a little too emphatically, matching the grin on the slightly younger man’s face with a slight shake of the head. “Okay then, Sergio,” he smiled as his own Portuguese accent played with the Spanish name, “we’re not going to get to talk to one another much once we’re in there, but after you exit the room, can you post yourself just outside of the door?” He scoffed as Sergio chuckled lightly and placed a hand on the broad shoulder of the Sevillan as he shook his head dismissively. “You can laugh all you want, but if you hear me screaming bloody murder in there, I want you to promise me that you’ll bust that door down and come in guns ablaze.”

His laughter rolled off his lips freely as the smile consumed his features, the sounds of his amusement left to fill the spaces of the corridor as he watched Cristiano’s eyes widen. Struggling to maintain his composure, acknowledging that he’d been laughing much harder than he should have been, he felt himself fall against the other, desperately clutching at the doctor’s shoulders as he attempted to stay on his feet. “Forgive me but I, I think you’ve been watching too many movies, Doctor Av… Cristiano,” he gasped out, silently praying for the oxygen to quickly return to his body. “That’s not quite how it works at this facility, particularly not here on the tenth floor – not above any floor above seven, for that matter. You see this door,” he started, small chuckles still squeezing themselves between breaths as he pointed at the door just in front of where they stood, “these doors are bulletproof, the glass on them is, at the very least.” He shook his head as Cristiano knocked on the door, deciding to answer the question that he knew would be incoming. “I remember when they were getting ready to install these a few years ago; no one here could understand the need for bulletproof doors at mental health facilities like this, not when they were first talking about ordering them. It seemed excessive, to say the least, but it only takes one person, one patient to change all of that. She was on the eighth floor,” he explained, nodding his head as the doctor came to realise exactly what that meant – floor eight had always been reserved for the female inpatients prone to violent outbursts and self-destructive tendencies, “and she threw herself through the plate glass door of the residential therapist after picking up some pretty bad news. Next thing you know, threat of a lawsuit and these bad boys start pouring in on overnight priority. There’s no way I can bust my boot through this and, from the looks of it, there seems to be three doors here.” Feeling a bit winded, he turned to find Cristiano’s eyebrows raised but his expression seeming to be one of understanding, otherwise. “All I’m saying is that the Wild Wild West option doesn’t look like much of an option here, doc.,” he chuckled as he pushed the doctor forward. “Besides, you said that he wasn’t dangerous or anything. Nothing to worry about.”

Cristiano took a moment to glance back down at the file one last time, reading over the scribbles that had filled the diagnosis box one final time, and sighed as he attempted to gain his composure. “I say a lot of things I don’t fully believe,” he confessed, though his confession was more for his ears than those of the Sevillan. He counted to ten before he reached for the handle of the first door, found himself grounded by the coolness of the touch, grounded as the reality of this moment, as the weight of this moment finally dawned on him. As far as gravity goes, there could have been no situation greater: he had been referred to as this man’s last hope of normalcy, had been tasked with the weight of this person’s life, of providing the final voice on how this person should live it; he was no god and yet, here he stood, with a power so seemingly god-like. “Let’s do this,” he finally declared, throwing one last glance over his shoulder – to find that his Sevillan support had already squared his shoulders, had already embodied a stance most authoritative – in the search of a nod of approval, just before he pressed against the door’s mechanism.

While the room was dark, it wasn’t pitch black: none of the lamps within the room had been switched on, all the lights above had been switched off, and the shades that covered the window had been drawn, but only halfway to allow just enough light to seep through, thus enabling Sergio and Cristiano with the proper means to navigate the room without much incident. It was a room unlike any other within the institute as it resembled the inside of a home, the interior of a spacious apartment more than anything – a vast living area, a modern kitchen absent utensils deemed inappropriate, an office space that seemed untouched, various artists decorating the walls – and, unlike most of the rooms within the facility, it seemed to have been kept quite meticulously…

…and that disturbed him in a manner that he couldn’t explain, in a way that he had never been bothered before. Everything seemed to have a place within that room and everything seemed to be in it – seemed. Cristiano’s eyes darted from one room to the next, from one space to the next, looking, searching for the one thing that didn’t belong – the resident of this room. He’d worked in two facilities prior to his move to Spain, two different facilities in different countries but he had never seen anything in either of those institutes that even remotely resembled what he was looking at – and he most certainly did not approve it. He had never taken kindly to seeing patients make a home out of treatment facilities, had never looked at institutionalization in a fond light; he had always wanted, demanded that his patients see themselves in a future outside of places like these, outside of confining walls and strict schedules, in a future with independence and freedom… He froze in his thoughts as he heard a rustling noise coming from the side of the room just opposite from where he stood, a noise coming around some unseen corner and he instinctively reached back for Sergio. He relaxed a bit as the guard placed a hand on his shoulder, as Sergio offered him a reassuring squeeze accompanied with the words “right behind you”, and that was enough to push him forward, enough to force him into swallowing the lump that had formed within his throat. “Joshua, is that you?” He paused, waiting for a response that would never come. “My name is Doctor Aveiro, but you can call me Cristiano. Cris, even, and I’m going to be your new therapist, your last therapist.”

While the room was dark, it wasn’t pitch black: none of the lamps within the room had been switched on, all the lights above had been switched off, and the shades that covered the window had been drawn, but only halfway to allow just enough light to seep through the windows so that Cristiano could properly make out the features of the face appearing from around that unseen corner. His paperwork slipped through his fingers, fell gently to the floor as he swore that he recognized those eyes of emerald, that slight tilt at the corner of those full lips… “Jacob?”


	5. Excerpt: Filthy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Excuse my tense inconsistency in the excerpts but, at the same time, don't. I wanted the tense to be reflective of something within the owner of the memories: that though his memories are in the past he still lives through them nearly every day. 
> 
> In other words, the tenses are and will forever be - for the most part - inconsistent in the excerpts.

_He was only nine years old the first time he woke up in the white, sticky mess of his own body; he was only nine years old the first time he woke up dry heaving in a pool of his own sweat as his boxers clung and stuck to his groin. He thought he had wet the bed at first and nearly started to cry until he realized the absence of the smell of ammonia, the absence of the burning he thought he’d surely feel on his thighs had that been the case. He remembered that morning well but couldn’t, for the life of him, ever remember what his dream had been about to begin with. His breathing was heavy, forced even, but he can still remember feeling himself starting to relax as his surroundings started to fall into the spaces around him, as he remembered where he was._

_He can still remember the sound of the room's door creaking open and sometimes, sometimes he thinks he can remember every feature of the face that peered around the edge of the wooden frame but other times, that face is just as blurry as most of his life seemed to be. Sometimes he remembers a smile on that face, sometimes it’s a disappointed frown, and other times it’s just a blank stare. He can easily remember the sound of the man’s footsteps coming towards him though, and the sound of the house’s old wooden floor boards creaking under the man’s weight as he came closer and closer… He always remembered the words that man whispered next, “they’ll be here for you soon. Let’s get you cleaned up,” though sometimes they were whispered jovially, sometimes the manner they were uttered in was grave and dark, other times they came out as robotic - always just as distorted as what he knew would surely follow. What always seemed to follow these memories of his._

_The bathroom wasn’t large and extravagant but it wasn’t small either; he remembered feeling small as he stood in the center of it but large as he sat on the floor of the porcelain bathtub. He remembered the dirt that had stained the grout holding the white tiles in their place as he stared at the floor in front of him, remembered the mud and dirt the man’s boots left behind as he made his way over to him just as the bathroom door clicked to a close behind him, remembered each zig and zag of the crack in the mirror hanging over the bathroom sink. It was an empty and a cold room - there were no mats on the floor, no towels of any sort hanging from the racks, no extra toilet paper above the toilet, no toiletries surrounding the sink - but he remembered smiling up at the man and sometimes, sometimes he remembered the man smiling back down on him._

_He could easily recall the dirt under the man’s nails as he watched him turn the knobs, as the water fell from the spigot, as the man ran his own soiled fingers under that water to check the temperature of it. The sound of the water falling onto more water, the sound of the man unzipping his own jacket, the sound of the cabinet under the sink opening as the man produced a washcloth and bar of soap… He remembered it all. Watching as the man guided the square piece of cloth in the water just beside him, his own smile as the rag floated to the surface at times, the soap suds the man created with the bar of soap by vigorously running the little rectangle in between the fibers of the cloth… He remembered seeing the man's bottom lip disappearing between his teeth, the rough feeling of the fibers of the cloth rubbing against his skin, the feeling of the little legs of the fireflies moving down from where they had landed on his shoulder just before the memory fades to black._

_ Sometimes he remembers a soft smile as the man told him that he had been ‘filthy’, sometimes he remembers a curious frown, sometimes it's just a blank stare, but it was always just as distorted as what had happened after the first firefly had landed...  _


	6. Doll Face

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _If there was a God then he supposed that he must have taken a lot of time painting and creating this person, must have used the softest and the finest of brushes as he inserted him in the canvas of life._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Editing-

His mother had collected dolls made of glass for as long as he could remember; she used to always tell him about how much she had adored them in her youth, how she had vowed to collect them as soon as she could afford them in her adulthood. Each doll had a story – each doll with blushed cheeks as red as roses, each doll with a permanent smile playing on the corner of her lips – and he’d always sat with his mother, listening as she would recount each and every one of them as she held them, as she would brush their hair poignantly, as she would fix their dresses and stockings, as she would polish their glass eyes and their pink lips. His father had always hated the things – he would so often call them ‘creepy’, ‘demonic’ even – but the love his father held for his mother had always seemed to overpower his disdain of the dolls, and so they still lined the shelves of his family home in Camas to that day… minus one. On the day that he had packed up his bags to leave home, she had handed him one of her most treasured possessions – a doll with hair as black as ebony, with glass eyes as green as sour apples – with tears in her eyes, with love in her heart. He had simply thrown it into one of his bags that had been filled with a few of his never-worn button ups, had shoved that bag into the chocked full trunk of the old, beat-up sedan his father had given him on the day he had turned seventeen, and he had never thought of that doll again… not until that day, at least. Not until he found those emerald green eyes, the eyes set beneath hair as black as ebony, the eyes of the resident of the tenth floor.

“Fuck.” It had been whispered, had been unheard by any being outside of himself, but he had dropped his guard – and he hated himself for that. He shook off the memory of the doll, attempted to regain his own composure as he offered the man – the man currently studying himself and Cristiano – a small smile accompanied with a wave only slightly idiotic in nature. A few moments passed… and then a few more. He had wanted to say something to break the uncomfortable silence that had formed within the room, but it hadn’t been his place to do so… Besides, he hadn’t known anything about the man standing in front of him, knew nothing of the man who was seemingly taking in his every detail; he hadn’t been sure of who he had been entrusted with protecting – he didn’t know if he was meant to protect Cristiano from this man, if he was meant to protect this man from Cristiano, if he was meant to protect them both from something or someone else, if he was meant only to protect the door leading onto the floor – and, as ironic as it all felt to him, it truly wasn’t his job to know, it wasn’t his job to ask questions. It was his job to ((stand there))

…and so, he did. By instinct, he placed his hand against the butt of his taser as his other found one of Cristiano’s shoulders; the movement had been enough to further draw out the green-eyed resident of the tenth floor, had been enough to get him to take another step out of the hallway, enough to allow even more of the sunlight to stream against and off the features of the other’s face. As he felt Cristiano’s breathing hitch, his breath did much of the same; floor ten was easily the prettiest man he had ever set his eyes upon – pretty, as his features weren’t strongly defined, weren’t chiseled and carved out like his and Cristiano’s jaw lines but rather softly, delicately defined. His mouth ran dry and he knew, in that moment, that if there was a god of some kind, He must have taken a hell of a lot of time when He had crafted and painted this person, that He must have used the finest of brushes when this man was inserted within His canvas of life. The jet-black hair of floor ten had been purposefully tousled at the top of his head and he found himself mesmerized by the contrast his hair drew with the vibrancy of those eyes; he was so much like that doll his mother had adored, so much like it and yet his eyes, those green orbs seemed to be filled with a childlike sense of wonder, seemed to be filled with this innocent curiosity that usually died out after a decade of life, and he struggled to look away.

He watched as the man started to rub his own arm anxiously and he, too, became curious as to what it was Cristiano had planned on doing from this point; he didn’t know how Cristiano knew this man – if he knew this man – and he certainly didn’t know why the doctor had referred to him as ‘Jacob’ immediately after having addressed him as ‘Joshua’, but he knew that this man – the man with the green eyes that made him think of sour apples in the fall – seemed to have no idea of who Cristiano was. He didn’t want to impose but Cristiano, the doctor still seemed to be transfixed on floor ten, seemed to be frozen in a state of shock or disbelief by his image as he appeared to be drained of all color, and so he leaned forward, gently asked if the doctor was ready for him to step outside.

Cristiano could feel the Sevillan’s warm breath ghosting over the shell of his ear but he couldn’t bring himself to respond; he couldn’t even hear what was being said or what was being asked over the sound of his own heart pounding wildly against his chest. He could feel himself starting to break, starting to falter but he knew that he needed to maintain his composure, knew that he needed to take large breaths, to calm himself down before he even attempted to engage with Jacob – ((no)) – Joshua. It’s just that… He knew that face. He’d know that face anywhere and after any number of days and yet, there was something so strange about those features, there was something so eerily different about the face he’d swear his own life by. As the warmth of Sergio’s breath left his skin, he felt the beat of his heart restore itself to the parameters deemed normal, could feel the oxygen surrounding him rhythmically entering and leaving his body. He knew that face, of this he held no doubt, but he suddenly wasn’t too sure if he knew who the person was behind it.

With an embarrassing chuckle, Cristiano bit his lip and immediately bent down to pick the papers of Joshua’s file from off the floor, frowning as he quickly became disappointed in himself; he typically hid his feelings well when he was with his patients, but he knew right then and there that this, that Joshua wouldn’t be one of his emblematic patients. “I think I need to step outside for a moment. I, uh, I’m so sorry Joshua. I swear, I’m usually more collected than this – much more collected and composed than this – but you, you took me by surprise.” He still found himself incapable of looking away from the man, almost fearful that the other would disappear as soon as he did but this… He shook his head. ((This can’t be happening)). “Sergio, you don’t mind keeping Josh company while I…?” Cristiano pointed his thumb back over his shoulder, pointed towards the doors without ever turning back towards the Andalucían… but he didn’t wait for the Sevillan to give him an answer before he backed his way out of those doors, before he made his way into the empty corridors of the floor, only breathing out a sigh of relief when he recalled that the three of them were alone on the floor. He waited for moment, then two, then three before he dropped the file to the floor, before he allowed himself to break down.

* * *

Sergio frowned as he heard the door click to a close and hesitantly turned back to the patient now standing on the opposite side of the room than him, no doctor to hide behind. He could see ink staining the biceps of the man and smiled to himself as he looked down at his own. “I was only sixteen when I went out and picked up my first tattoo,” Sergio chuckled as he remembered the feeling of the needle pressed up against his skin for the first time, the way the ink dripped out and into the skin abrasion and permanently stained his flesh for the first time, “my mother was so pissed off. She didn’t care why I had gotten it, she didn’t care that it was no bigger than a peso. I still have it,” he muttered as he glanced over his ink ridden skin, “somewhere.” He breathed out a sigh of relief as a smile formed on the face of the other man and he decided, rather quickly, that he liked that smile. “I’m sorry, I just, I didn’t expect to see you – ever. Like, never, at any point in time, for any reason. The guard who worked on the floor before me was…”

“...terrifying,” the other man absent-mindedly filled in for the broad-shouldered security guard. Sure, the man with the tattoos on his arms and neck instilled a certain reverential fear within him but his eyes were kind, much kinder than those of the guard preceding him. He liked the little flecks of vibrant color in the eyes of the guard, liked how light and carefree his voice seemed to be, he liked his tattoos and he liked the way he seemed to look at the doctor. “He didn’t mean to scare me,” his voice drifted as he recalled the man with the thick eyebrows that shadowed eyes the color of sapphire, “I just wasn’t sure if he was real or not, and so I asked him if he was...” He could feel the fireflies starting to dance across his cheekbones, could feel them on his lips and his thighs; he didn’t know how they had gotten into the hospital, couldn’t remember the last time he had felt their little legs dancing across his flesh outside of his memories, and yet… The ink blots returned, it had been years since they had stained his vision, years since they had stripped him of his memory, but they had returned that day. “I don’t remember anything else, but I do remember the fireflies. They’re all I could ever remember… and he let them in here.”

All too suddenly, Sergio realized that he wasn’t supposed to be hearing any of this, that this was meant for the ears of the therapist – for Cristiano – and that this was the very reason why anyone outside of the counselors and the therapists had been prohibited from speaking to the patients. His curiosity had already been peaked, though, and he knew that this man had been attempting to inform him of what had happened to Gerard – in his own way, that what Joshua had been describing must have been the reason for the sudden vacancy in the security position the tenth floor. It had all seemed so cryptic, though, and it all sounded well above his paygrade. ((I remember the fireflies… he let them in here)).

Sergio threw a quick glance over his shoulder and silently prayed for Cristiano to come back in haste, silently prayed to no avail before he eventually decided to settle himself on the sofa that had been positioned just feet from where he had been standing. “Uhm, I’m sorry about the… about the, uh, fireflies. I didn’t… On the plus side, this is definitely one of the nicest rooms I’ve ever seen within a mental health facility. I mean, yes, this is the only one I’ve ever worked but still…” He had been mumbling, his words had come out somewhere just above a whisper, but he couldn’t suppress his own smile as the laughter of the resident had reached him. ((He had been listening)). “Your parents must really love you,” but he stopped himself as the laughter of the other interrupted the rest of his sentiment, forcing him to silently wonder what it had been that he had said to inspire such a reaction. For a moment, just a moment he thought sarcasm to be the root but there had been something about that smile, had been something genuine within that spill of laughter.

He watched as the bird slid off the window, as it fell the stories below, and turned his attentions back on the guard. He had originally intended to respond to his thought – but the pigeon – but the only sound that had escaped his lips was that of laughter; he had been startled by the bird and he felt he needed to release a sudden build-up of anxiety out from within his chest and laughter, ‘laughter is the best medicine’… or so he’d always heard, so he’d always been told. A few moments later, a few moments after the fear had subsided and after he had regained his composure, he finally turned his attention back on the inked Spaniard. “No, they’re doing this,” he answered as he pointed around the room – as he pointed at the furnishings and the decorations, at the appliances and at the pops of colour – and sighed, “out of a guilty conscious. They think that their absence put me in here, but it didn’t,” he breathed out as he stared up at the ceiling, “they didn’t. At least, I don’t think they did.” In truth, he didn’t know why he had been placed here; he didn’t understand what these people had wanted from him, what these people thought was wrong with him, and he didn’t... He sighed, head throbbing and vision blurring. “I think I’m going to go to bed now,” he stated simply, suddenly finding himself overwhelmed by the anxiety of having met two new people within the same day. “I liked speaking with you, though... Sergio.”

* * *

He was biting his fingernails as he flipped through the pages of the patient file for, what had to be, the thirtieth time within those past few moments; Cristiano didn’t know exactly what it had been that he was looking for – he hadn’t seen the ink blots as doodles until after having had the file for twelve hours, so perhaps – but he was hoping that he had managed to miss something else, that he had managed to miss the one thing that would help him make sense of why he was here… and why Joshua was here …and why he felt as if he knew him. It couldn’t have been coincidence, chance. No… Fate. He read over the words ‘schizophrenia’ and ‘dissociative identity disorder’ multiple times but he couldn’t, for the life of him, find the notes that had led up to the diagnosis; words like ‘Madeira’ and ‘Portugal’, ‘Casa Pia’ and ‘missing person’ jumped off the page at him, familiar words seemingly left if only to assure him that he knew who this guy was or, at the very least, knew something about him but it was never enough. They must have known one another at some point, must have crossed paths as the place they both called ‘home’ was so small, so how he could be a stranger to this one, he couldn’t know… but the connection was missing, the bridge not yet built nor even planned. The only three documented notes held within the file all dated back eight years and Cristiano noticed that the words 'fireflies' and 'ink blots' were being used repetitively, to the extent that the last therapist to document their notes had simply drawn fireflies and ink blots in the place of words on the college ruled lines.

Cristiano jumped as the door flung open, briefly sparing the guard a curious glance just before he turned his attentions back on the same old nothing he had started the day with. He could feel the attentions of the guard falling on him, felt himself blush as he heard the other sliding against the wall, falling to the tiled floor in the space just beside where he sat. Watching as his white coat was removed from between their bodies, he cleared his throat and pretended to happen upon something fascinating within the scribbled doodles. “Is there something wrong,” he asked coyly as he attempted to bury his overwhelming sense of curiosity with feigned indifference.

Raising his eyebrows, he released a breathy chuckle, sparing the doctor a look of disbelief all the while. “Is there something…? Is there something wrong,” he laughed out, the grin on his face spreading as he was found with the rounded eyes of the Portuguese man. “Perhaps I should be the one asking that question, eh,” he chuckled out as he watched the other close the patient file with a roll of his eyes. He angled his body to better conversate as Cristiano did the same, glanced over his shoulder as if something or someone would appear out of thin air to eavesdrop on their conversation before continuing. “I know that I’m not supposed to talk to the patients or anything,” he started, biting his lip as he watched Cristiano react – or fail to, “but you left so suddenly and… He, uh, he talked to me. About Pique. About the guard who ran detail up here before I was assigned to the floor. He talked about Pique and he talked about these fireflies and…”

“Wait a minute,” the doctor interrupted the Spaniard, holding up a hand to stop him as he whipped out a pen to begin scribbling on the back of the folder still held within his grasp, “not only did you talk to him... but he spoke with you?” He shook his head in disbelief. From the looks of the notes within the file, Joshua hadn’t spoken with anyone in years and, when he did speak, it was only ever about ‘lightening bugs [that crawled] across his skin”, and it most certainly was never in conversation directed to someone from the institute. He spoke to someone, to something that previous doctors had readily labelled as a delusion, a hallucination of sorts but never... “He not only spoke with you about the fireflies but he also spoke with you about Gerard Pique?” He chewed on the cap of his pen, attempted to draw a connection to Sergio – impossible given his limited amount of information, yet he couldn’t help but wonder what it had been about the Sevillan, what part of Sergio Joshua was speaking to. ((Why him? Why now?)) He must have seen something familiar within the guard, must have connected with him in a way he’d probably forgotten but what – what – what? “What did he, did he say anything in particular about them?”

Sergio bit his lip as he attempted to recall the conversation, finding himself suddenly and uncharacteristically forgetful as he had been founded by the full attention of the beautiful doctor. “He, uh… I had told him that I was surprised to see him and I mentioned Pique but, when I, when I did, he kind of interrupted me. He said that Pique was, uhm, he was terrifying? I couldn’t make sense out of what he meant after that, when he said that Gerard hadn’t meant to scare him – but he did – and that he had only asked Gerard if he had been real. After that, he, uh, he said that Pique let the fireflies in. He seemed a bit off when he started talking about it, I mean, different than how we had been speaking before but, uh, but he said that he hadn’t remembered anything else about Gerard. Just the fireflies.” He may not have understood what had been said, the plausible value of the interaction, but Cristiano hadn’t looked up from his scribble in well over five minutes. “Oh shit, uhm, that wasn’t all. He talked about his parents, about the people paying for these accomadations. I said that they must have loved him for having spent so much but he suggested, he thinks that they’re acting out of a guilty conscious. While he said that there was nothing for them to feel guilty about, he also acknowledged that they had nothing to feel guilty about ((to his recollection))… and that was all he had said before deciding that we exhausted him.” Sergio finished with a sigh and allowed his head to fall back against the wall, quietly watching as the Madeiran doctor became reduced to chewed up pen caps and nervous tapping.

He had never faced a patient who had challenged him in the manner that this one seemed to; he rattled his mind searching for something, searching for anything that would help him gain more insight into the actions of his patient. All so suddenly, he became disappointed with himself, closing the folder with a sense of finality as the revelation dawned on him. He was holding more information on this patient than anyone else had in over eight years. He had his start: he could either speak with the parents or, better still, “Gerard.” His voice had broken the ten-minute stretch of silence that had filled the corridor and he immediately began laughing out an apology as the guard, who had been nodding off beside him, jumped ever so slightly. “Oh, sorry about that, but we need to talk to Gerard. He’d know what happened that day just as well as…”

“Whoa! Hold on a minute there, doc, but it sounded like you just said ‘we’?” He turned his head to where he could properly face the bright-eyed therapist and immediately groaned. “I’m just, I’m a security guard, Cristiano. That’s all I’m supposed to do. Look, I know I messed up in there but I… I’m supposed to protect him and I’m, I’m supposed to keep you safe. No questions asked, no verbal exchanges with the patient, no breach of confidentiality, and I’m pretty sure interrogations are…”

“Oh, so now you’re concerned about breaching confidentiality,” Cristiano scoffed out as he gently patted the shoulders of the Spaniard in a manner almost assuring. “Come on, Sergio. You spent a solid five or ten minutes in that room with him and you already have greater insight than I have after spending thirty plus hours drooling over every infinitesimal speck within this god-forsaken file.” He allowed his head to fall back against the wall as his exasperation caught the better of him, allowed it to gently roll along the surface until he found the eyes of the Sevillan man. “Please, Sergio. You’ve happened upon yourself in a position to help; if you don’t – who knows? – he could spend the rest of his life in here.”

It was a small motion, the simplest of movements, but Sergio felt his heart melt as the hand of the therapist fell lightly to his bicep, and he shuddered as the phonetics of his own name rolled off those lips, formed by that tongue, with each letter of each syllable dripping with the thick accent of the Portuguese islander. Whatever he did, he simply couldn’t… but he did, and he felt himself falling ever so dangerously into the brown eyes of the older man. It was in that moment that he knew he’d forfeit, that he’d give in to whatever it was that this man had wanted from him. Moving mountains? Not a problem. Doctor Aveiro wanted to hold the heavens within the palms of his own hands? He’d make it happen. Remove every grain of salt from the world’s oceans? He’d be the guy, his guy.

“You’d be helping this man in a way you have never fathomed… You’d be helping me,” and he hadn’t known why his voice had dropped off in that manner, why his voice cracked, but he hadn’t the time to dwell on himself because, “his life could well be in your hands, Sergio. You could save him and I thought, I thought that was what everyone who set out for a academia policia queria? I thought that’s what you came here for?” He smiled as he sensed the security guard giving in, as he saw the apprehension that had been painted so heavily against the features of the other starting to falter, and he mentally started counting up the hours, trying to figure out when he’d be able to slip out of the facility. “Let’s see, my shifts…? They’re typically sixteen hours but I always work according to need… but I should be able to get out around nine in the morning, nine tomorrow. We can,” he chuckled out, having noticed the eyes of the Sevillan widening at his choice of pronouns, “we should be able to speak with Gerard then,” he finished as he playfully jabbed an index finger within the guard’s ribcage. “What say you?”

Sergio simply sighed in defeat and nodded his head in agreement. Working on the tenth floor meant that he didn’t have shifts anymore, just a few scattered hours throughout the day and night, a schedule that would allow him to leave the facility just long enough to handle his most detrimental of affairs. Spending a few of those hours – and all of the time the therapist chose to spend on this floor – with Cristiano was nothing worthy of complaint either way he looked at it. “I guess… It sounds like a plan, Doc.”

“Did you know him?” Cristiano asked as he clamored to his feet and attempted to collect himself back together once more, releasing a sigh of relief as the atrocious initial ‘counseling’ incident now lay in the past. He found Sergio’s furrowed brow and continued as he made his way over to the ‘visitors’ area. “Gerard Pique,” he clarified as he threw open the refrigerator, pulling out two bottles of water, “have you ever met him? I mean, you both pulled security detail here and…”

“I didn’t know him though,” Sergio interrupted as he twisted off the bottle cap and took in a large gulp of water. “He’d been here about a year or so before I ever came along, had already been promoted to the tenth floor by the time I moved from lobby security to inpatient detail. I never saw him and you’ll probably never see me off of this floor either…”

“...unless you’re with me,” the doctor quickly interjected as he stole a grape from the bowl sitting on the bar top they were leaning against, earning a blush and a chuckle from the man reigning from Camas.

“…unless I’m with you,” he conceded, blushing as the smile on his lips deepened. Sergio didn’t understand why the facility chose to use only guard for the entire tenth floor, why they couldn’t alternate stints between two guards, but he quickly figured that it had something to do with the man he had just met, that it must’ve had something to do with Josh; if it had something to do with him, it was above his pay grade in the same manner that it was above his pay grade if it had nothing to do with him. Either way, “...other than that this floor is pretty much my new home.”


	7. Moment of Insanity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Content Trigger Warning: Strong Language and Explicit Sexual Content**
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> _There was no rhythm to it, nothing beautiful nor poetic about the way he fucked floor ten until the man bled beneath him. Nothing beautiful about the bruises he left on the hip bones of the other man as he drilled his way deep inside of him to prove that he was more than man enough to handle him. Nothing poetic about the tears that stained floor ten’s cheeks, nothing poetic about the way the other man clawed at the coffee table beneath him..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I, personally, detest the usage of certain words within the English language. However, I needed for the interaction recollected within this chapter to come across as crude as possible so I used said detested words. ~~I still need to proof read this (as well as the chapters preceding it) - I haven't even taken a second glance at it yet - and will do so in the morning as I have repulsed myself enough for one evening.~~

He still wasn’t sure why he had agreed to do this, he actually liked his career and would rather not find himself in the middle of something that would surely put it in jeopardy. He had been thinking about it all night, Cristiano’s plans to meet up with Gerard to discuss why he had chosen to leave Broken Arrow, and he still wasn’t feeling too sure about any of it. He hadn’t seen Joshua for the rest of the night and figured he was sleeping like every other human being within Spain was at those hours and knew after the turn of his first hour on duty that he’d be in for a quiet evening. He was right of course, though he did find himself in a meeting with his boss to reaffirm everything he had already figured out while learning of a few of the perks of his newfound position that he had overlooked. He’d have more freedom than he had initially thought, as the only patient on the floor required little to no supervision by any one other than a psychiatrist, and he was only but required to be on the floor for a total of fifteen hours (he was permitted to leave for his lunch hour) and could choose to spend the other eight (nine including his lunch hour) in any way he deemed fit, whenever he deemed fit. His title changed from ‘Security Guard’ to ‘Residential Guard’ as he was being assigned a room on the tenth floor with a simple explanation: ‘the patient struggles with strange faces coming and going and finds comfort in familiarity’. The badge he used to get onto the floor would immediately clock him in and out when it was scanned and he needed to only fill out a report at the end of each week; it was pretty much summarized as the easiest job in the world, one that pretty much paid him to sleep and play video games all day with a gun strapped to his waist… and he wanted to keep it. Sergio glanced over to where Cristiano was fixing his hair in the mirror of the room he had claimed as his own and smiled softly just before he asked the same question he had been asking himself all night. “Why are we doing this again, Cristiano?” It wasn’t that he wasn’t supportive of what Cristiano was trying to do, it was just that, “We’re not investigative journalists or private detectives or anything of the sort. I’m just a security guard who…”

“...vowed to protect these patients at any cost,” Cristiano interrupted the Spanish man as he motioned to the room just beside them while he tousled around his own hair a bit more. He had already run home to strip himself of his suit and Sergio had grabbed his own civilian clothes on one of his breaks, it was just a matter of convincing the man to put them on. “Look Sergio, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to but you can’t stand here and tell me that you don’t know the diagnosis of every person on the fifth floor. Some things are, they're just obvious, some things are heard whether or not you're meant to hear them. You don’t have any kind of an obligation to figure out what’s going on with Josh, that’s my job, and you’re right to not want to come along. I just thought that…” He didn’t. He didn’t think about what this could possibly do to Sergio’s career, he didn’t think about what the security guards of Broken Arrow were allowed to do and weren’t allowed to do, he didn’t think about what they were allowed to see and weren’t allowed to see, what they were allowed to know and what they weren’t allowed to know. “You know what,” he concluded as he looked away from the mirror and found the security guard with his utility belt still firmly in place, “you’re right.” He rarely ever fell back on reverse psychology, it had stopped working on his patients at the turn of the decade and he personally found it to be quite a desperate tactic for psychologists and psychiatrists to use, and desperation was the last thing he wanted to project to his patients. Sergio wasn't one of his patients though, he was...“You’re just a security guard. What can you do to help the one patient you’re charged with protecting?”

Sergio released an exasperated sigh and watched as the good looking doctor fixed the black and white checkered scarf around his neck and pulled the hem of his fitted black shirt further down to cover the band of his boxer-briefs that happened to be peeking over the top edge of his slim fit jeans. He looked even better in casual clothes than he did in his suits, something Sergio would have never thought possible. “Goddamn it," he muttered in defeat as he forced himself to look away from the doctor and started to unbuckle his utility belt, “I swear, if I liked you any less Cristiano…” He trailed as he gently unstrapped and placed his taser, gun, baton, gerber, flashlight, handcuffs, and every other essential of his onto the bed and tried to formulate what excuse he’d give to the armor as to why he was turning in his assigned weapons and leaving in the company of one of the therapists. It wasn’t that he wasn’t allowed to leave, that he needed an excuse to leave the facility as he had already been there for fourteen of his required ~~sixteen~~ fifteen hours, but he knew how much people around the facility loved to talk.

Cristiano smiled as the Sevillan gave in to him and flushed as soon as Sergio’s shirt left his body, definitely impressed by the taut abs the Spaniard had been hiding beneath his work shirt. Sure, he worked out in his spare time to distract himself from the burdens of his patients and had abs of his own but Sergio’s...? He had to fight the urge to reach out to touch the ridges and valleys on the other man’s stomach and cursed himself silently for the thought. He took a false interest in the laces of his Converse, did anything and everything to distract himself from the man undressing directly in front of him, and had to bite his lip to hold back the whimper forming at the back of his throat as he saw the guard undo the top button of his pants within his peripheral vision, bringing a partially hidden tattoo to the light, a tattoo that the doctor wanted to... “I’ll just, uh,” Cristiano stammered out as the round eyes of the Spaniard found his. He could feel himself sweating and his hands had started to shake and he started to silently pray to all of the deities he could think of that his sudden change had gone unnoticed, “I’ll just wait out in the lobby area for you.”  

He couldn’t breathe again until he was out in the hallway and away from the gorgeous body of the security guard. He wasn’t around gorgeous men often, ever for that matter, as he never really had the time to meet people outside of ‘the office’ and he didn’t like to talk much when he was working out. If he wasn’t at the gym then he was in bed, if he wasn’t in bed then he was at the office; if he wasn’t in any of those three places then he had probably gotten lost on his way to one of of them. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had gone on a date with someone, anyone - a friend, a family member… Perhaps it was sometime in college but who could really be sure? Either way, "what the fuck am I doing?"

* * *

 

“Do you not know your right from your left?” Sergio laughed out as the doctor steered his Land Rover down yet another road he wasn’t told to turn on. “You’re so smart and yet you can’t follow simple GPS directions,” he giggled as the Portuguese man smiled beside him and attempted to reach over to smack him in the back of the head, “they even…” Sergio gasped out as the therapist pulled over to catch his own breath, “...it even has pictures and you still can’t… you still…” Sergio rolled down his window and stuck his head outside of it, gasping for fresh air but found himself choking on the exhaust of some semi that had blown passed them on the main road just a few feet away from where Cristiano had pulled over. The past twenty minutes had been filled with wrong turns, pit stops to catch breaths after a few good laughs, and more than one awkward moment in which he was caught staring at the therapist in admiration. “I’m sorry,” Sergio chuckled out as soon as he managed to catch his breath, not sorry at all, “I just find it hard to believe that a person can have a PH. D without knowing their left from their right.”

Cristiano smiled as he tapped on the screen of his SUV’s navigation system and shook his head as it began to reroute them. “There are different kinds of intelligence, my friend,” he sighed as the monitor informed him that they were only five minutes away from Gerard’s house. “I didn’t mess up too terribly this time,” he snickered as he started to read the last of the directions aloud, stopping as he noticed Sergio unbuckling his seat belt in his peripheral, “wh-what are you doing?” He asked as the Spaniard opened the car door and climbed out, closing the door behind him. He watched as Sergio circled the car, opened up his door, and unbuckled his seatbelt. “What are you…?”

“Move over,” Sergio laughed out as he shoved Cristiano against the center console, “you’ve done enough damage and we’ll never get there at the rate you’re going.” He could feel Cristiano’s shirt slipping up as he continued to push the other man into the passenger’s seat and it wasn’t long until he was staring at the Portuguese man’s bronzed abdomen, until his fingertips were brushing against the softness of the therapist’s bare skin. He cursed under his breath as his hand trembled against the flesh of the psychiatrist and felt himself shrink in his skin as the other man turned to give him a quizzical look just before falling into the passenger’s seat. Sergio shook his head dismissively, secretly praying that the other man wouldn’t make anything out of the little tremble and climbed into the driver’s seat of the SUV. Cristiano wasn’t much taller than him so the adjustments were slight but he took much longer than necessary in making them as he could still feel the question in the look Cristiano still seemed to be giving him. “Okay, we’re only a few minutes away,” he started nervously, hoping that Cristiano would take the distraction as he pulled off of the side of the road and started driving again, “have you thought of what you wanted to say?”

Cristiano chewed on the inside of his cheek and quickly glanced outside just before he responded to the Sevillan's question. “I was just going to ask him why he chose to quit his job after a little over eight years of working on the tenth floor. Ask him what changed, on the floor and in him. That’s all.” Cristiano sighed and looked out at the little blurs passing them by, chuckling as he voiced his next thoughts, “Or we could just kick in his door, slam him on the table, and demand that he tell us anything and everything he knows about a man named Josh.” He turned as the sound of Sergio’s laugh reached his ears and smiled at the Spaniard just as the other man took a sharp left turn. “You think you can handle that?”

“Oh,” Sergio breathed out as he widened his eyes in amusement and stole a glance of the other man who was busy laughing at himself, “so I’m the muscle. That’s why you needed me, you only wanted me for my body.” The Spaniard shook his head in false disappointment and dramatically started to snivel. “I feel so used, so…” he trailed as the GPS beeped and as the checkered flag started waving just to their right - though Sergio swore Cristiano was studying the house to their left because the man didn’t know his left from his right - indicating that the picturesque, white panel home with the red shutters they were currently pulling into park in front of was the home of the Gerard they were looking for.

* * *

 

Cristiano was nosy and curious by nature, those attributes of his personality seemed to contribute to his line of work so he rarely ever had to think about biting his tongue, but he wasn’t at work and he could feel his teeth starting to draw blood as he was forced to take ‘bite your tongue’ in a literal sense. He wasn’t here to diagnose Gerard with anything, wasn’t here to ask about his life rather to ask about one day of it, but the man’s story was hanging proudly on the walls of the living room and Cristiano found it all too tempting… “Are you still close with your family? That must’ve been amazing having such a solid support system throughout your youth.” He could see Sergio shaking his head in disapproval out of the corner of his eye and stole a quick glance of the Sevillan, simply shrugging when he caught the other man’s attention.

Gerard studied Cristiano for a moment before he spoke, the realization dawning on him as words found him. “I am, they’re pretty solid pillars of support I’d say. My wife has been understanding of the sudden change in our circumstances… I’m sorry but I have to ask. Are you the therapist who testified against that Portuguese serial killers insanity plea a few years back on behalf of the state?” He guardedly watched the other man smile sheepishly and chose his next words carefully, “You’re not here to…?”

“Oh no,” Cristiano rushed out as he realized where the other man was going with his line of questioning, “I’m just working as a psychiatrist over at your former place of employment, at the Broken Arrow Behavioral Health Institute.” He studied the man as his blue eyes widened and noticed how his shoulders tensed up at mentioning of the medical facility. “Sergio,” Cristiano continued as he pointed to the man sitting rigidly beside him, “and I were assigned to the patient on the tenth floor and your sudden… resignation raised a few questions for myself and concerns for Sergio as he now finds himself in what was your former position.” He could already see the other man shaking his head and knew that there was no way he’d get him to open up about what had happened like this so he decided to drop the formalities. “Look, I’m going to be completely honest with you. I don’t know shit about that man on the tenth floor, I don’t understand what the hell is in his folder because he’s… He’s obviously a bit delusional. That’s obvious, something you don’t need to read in twelve point Times New Roman font in a confidential file. I’m desperate, I mean, I’m putting this man’s job,” he pointed towards Sergio who was already tilting his head in agreement, “at risk in an attempt to figure out what’s going on with this guy.” He watched and shook his head in disappointment as Gerard got up from his seat and headed for the doorway and was about to find his feet when he heard the lock turn.

“What I tell you stays between us and that stupid file you guys like to carry around. Got that?” He pointedly looked at the two men sitting on the couch and walked back into the room but sat on the coffee table just in front of the two men. He watched as the doctor, Aveiro, pulled a memo pad and a pen out of his pocket and glanced over at the guard sitting beside him, smiling because it was obvious why he was here and it had nothing to do with the patient on the tenth floor. “I didn’t know his name and I never found out, eight years of working on that floor and I only saw him once. The therapist who had charge of the floor, Doctor Hernandez, rarely ever came up to speak with him and when he did, he never stayed for anymore than a few minutes. Everytime he left he was mumbling something about their sessions being useless, something about the patient’s refusal to speak but I never asked questions, it’s not our job to ask questions,” he glanced over at Sergio who nodded his head in agreement but looked at Cristiano as he continued. “My last day wasn’t like any of the other days though, the therapist had come and stayed just as long as he usually did but as he left, as he scanned his card to leave the floor I noticed the patient sticking his head out of his door, almost as if he was making sure he left. I found out a little bit later that it was Doctor Hernandez’s last day of charge over the patient, that he was transferring from him to another…” he trailed as Cristiano’s bright brown eyes found his and he smiled a little, tilted his head to the side a bit, “...he was transferring to you. I was writing my notes for the week when I saw him poke his head out again, only he saw me that time…” Gerard trailed as he lost himself in the memory of the patient on floor ten.

> _His brows were furrowed and his green eyes were narrowed as he found him, he seemed to be confused, balancing on the fine line of cautious curiosity. He saw the man tilt his head as he waved at him and saw him take a few steps back into the room as he rose to his feet. “...and this whole time I thought I was guarding an empty room.” He was speaking to him as one would speak to a child simply because he didn’t know how to properly speak to a man that, as Doctor Hernandez claimed, never spoke back; it was a cheerful yet corny tone of voice one would usually never use on a child over the age of five. He was no more than two feet away from the other man when the other released the door…_

“I didn’t know if I was supposed to follow him in or if he wanted me to go away.” Gerard’s voice was just above a whisper but it was just as strong as his memory of his last day at work. “I shouldn’t have followed him in there. There was no threat, he wasn’t in harms way… I wasn’t needed but I…”

> _He caught the door before it could close and pushed his way through it, the second, and the third door. He had to catch his breath as he caught sight of the room for the first time as he was impressed by the furnishings and the classy decor, it was unlike anything else he had ever seen in all of his years at the institute. “No wonder why you never want to come out of this place,” he whispered to himself as he caught sight of the view just outside of the window._
> 
> _“Are you real?”_
> 
> _He looked away from the window as he caught sight of the man, the patient, standing only five feet away from him. He didn’t know what to make of the question; he knew that this man was obviously afflicted with schizophrenia if he had to ask such a thing but he never, in the nine years he spent working at the facility, knew how to respond to it. He could tell him that he was real but Gerard knew that all of the voices this man heard, all of the people this man had ever seen were real... even if only to him._

“I should’ve just nodded and told him who I was. I should’ve just answered his question and left but I… I didn’t…”

> _He wasn’t sure if it was the way the sun was bouncing off of the high rise of the other man’s cheekbones that made him want to rub his thumb over them or if he had simply been driven mad by the realization that such a beautiful person had been hiding in here under his protection over the past eight years... He wasn’t sure if it was the way the other man bit his lip as he traced his cheekbones with one of his thumbs that made him want to taste those lips or if he had simply wanted to make a statement to the other man: “you’re mine to protect”... He wasn’t sure if it was the intoxicating taste of the man that had driven him to shove his hand under the shirt of the other or if it was simply a moment of true insanity… Whatever it was, he knew immediately that he had been wrong to have touched the man in any way, even if it was to show him just how real he was. He pulled away from him as soon as the realization dawned on him, stuttered out an apology, but…_

“I tried to leave before… I tried to remove myself from the situation but I, I couldn’t… I should’ve never…”

> _The other man’s green eyes had gone from narrow and cautious to round and wild, his voice from soft and insecure to stern and demanding. “Am I not good enough for you?” They weren’t questions that had a safe answer. “Am I not pretty enough for you?” They weren’t questions at all... “Am I not masculine enough for you?” ...and they had no real answers. “Or are you not man enough for me?” It was a challenge, nothing more and nothing less._
> 
> _A challenge he should have never accepted, a challenge he would have never accepted had he been a better man. He never should have grabbed that pretty face with as much force as he did, never should have slammed that man against the wall with as much force as he did, should have never shoved his tongue into that man’s mouth. He didn’t know how long the other man had been at the facility but, judging by the way the other man worked his tongue, he knew the man had had a lot of ‘experience’ with people outside of the facility… something he should have never known._
> 
> _He felt his pants coming undone and winced as he heard his utility belt collapsing to the floor, shivered in anticipation as he watched the other man fall to his knees and pulled his bottom lip in between his teeth as he felt the other man nuzzle into his groin. He could feel the other man’s hot breath through the thin fabric of his boxers and gritted his teeth as he attempted to hold back a moan of satisfaction as the hot breath turned to warm moisture... As his soft member grew harder and firmer with each passing moment, as he felt the waistband of his boxers being yanked off of his waist - passed his hip bones and passed his thighs - as they dropped around his ankles he, too, dropped his reservations and with them, the reality of the situation._
> 
> _He felt those soft lips grazing his even softer flesh and his heart beat ferociously as he felt the tongue of the other man purposefully tracing the thick vein running on the underside of his cock. He moaned as he finally felt the inside of the other man’s mouth wrapping around the head, clawed at the other man’s jet black hair as he felt the tip of the other man’s tongue flicking his slit and grabbed at his throat just as the other began to swallow the early traces of his pre-cum, moaning even louder as he felt the other man’s carotid throbbing wildly between his thumb and index finger... He drew blood from his lips as he felt his cock suddenly hit the soft velvety tissue at the back of the other man’s throat, as he felt the hot, slick of the other man’s mouth now on every inch of his cock, as he felt the vibrations of the other man’s humming massaging every centimeter of him, as he felt strands of the man’s hair brushing lightly against his abdomen forcing him to close his eyes as he tried to hold himself back. He pulled at the other man’s hair even tighter, used both of his hands to get the attention of the other as he looked down to plead with him but saw only blurs and spots in the place of the green eyes he had been searching for._

“I know what happened was wrong but I don’t think there’s anything I could have done to… It was almost as if he wanted me to…”

> _By the time his vision came into focus he found only another challenge waiting for him in those emerald orbs, daring him to be a little rougher, begging him to be little more authoritative in his guidance. He grabbed handfuls of the other man’s hair and ripped his mouth off of his dick and threw him onto the coffee table only a few feet from where they had been leaning against the wall. Plants and coasters fell and broke against the hard surface of the floor but his gaze had been intent on the eyes of the man now laying on the table, still fully dressed, still seeming to taunt him. He pulled at the elastic waistband of floor number ten’s sweatpants as soon as they were within his reach, eyes trained on those verdant eyes of the other all the while. He didn’t care that the other man wasn’t aroused in the slightest... he was and the other was responsible for making him that way and was all but forcing him to do this with his silent challenges. He wrapped his hands around the inked forearms of the other man and yanked him off of the coffee table only to slam him back down on top of it as soon as he had turned him around - he didn’t need to look at his pretty face to get off, he didn’t need to be challenged anymore to go through with this - pulling down the boxer-briefs of the other man and smiling as he took in the toned body laying before him… but then he started to back away._

“I couldn’t… but, but then he just…”

> _He froze as the emerald eyed man looked over his shoulder and simply smiled at him. He was pitying him it seemed, he was amused by his hesitation it seemed and slightly intrigued, perhaps. He didn’t like that smile, he didn’t like anything about it and he didn’t like the meaning he knew was laying somewhere within it. He wondered what this man was doing and, for the first time that day, wondered what the hell that man was doing here on the tenth floor - alone and isolated. Maybe he was desperate for companionship after all of that time? Maybe he needed to experience some form of intimacy?_
> 
> _He felt like he was in a trance as he stepped forward, was going through some kind of pre-programmed motions as he made his way back to the other man and fell to his knees, as he began kiss the firm definition of the other’s ass, as he slowly kissed his way to the man’s opening. He placed a hand on either of the other’s cheeks and pulled them apart so that he could easily navigate his tongue inside of the other man for a second time. He felt the man relax further beneath him, felt his shoulders fall as he licked in and around his entrance, as he forced his slimy, pliant tongue through the other man’s tight ring of flesh and muscle…_
> 
> _A hand was suddenly in his hair, gently tugging on his scalp, forcing him to find his feet. He smiled in self-satisfaction and spit on two of his fingers, slowly trailing his fingers over the curve of the other man’s ass just before he gently pressed one of them against the tightness of his entrance; he frowned when he realized he wasn’t receiving a reaction from the other man and decided to further tease his opening, threatening to enter him but stopping just before his fingers could fall through… Before he could fully push inside of him a hand with a tattooed wrist - the hand of floor ten - wrapped around his wrist and pulled him further forward. There was to be no more stretching._
> 
> _He lined himself up with the man’s entrance with one hand and anchored the hips of floor ten firmly into place with the other as he forced the girth and length of his cock in its entirety inside of the other in one single, far from gentle thrust, grunting as felt the oh-so-fucking-tight resistance of the other man already starting to falter. He took in a large breath of air and released it slowly through his nose as he slowly withdrew his cock from the other man... Another deep inhale just before he suddenly and forcefully shoved himself back inside of the other man - in and out, in and out, inhaling and exhaling, inhaling and exhaling. He wanted floor ten to taste him fucking him, wanted him to taste each drop of pre-cum he left inside of his body with each retraction... So he slammed into him a little bit harder than he had in each thrust preceding that one._
> 
> _There was no rhythm to it, nothing beautiful nor poetic about the way he fucked floor ten until the man bled beneath him. Nothing beautiful about the bruises he left on the hip bones of the other man as he drilled his way deep inside of him to prove that he was more than man enough to handle him. Nothing poetic about the tears that stained floor ten’s cheeks, nothing poetic about the way the other man clawed at the coffee table beneath him..._

“He was moaning as if he was enjoying it, saying dirty things to encourage me, telling me to call him dirty names, but in retrospect, in retrospect he didn’t even seem like, his voice was… I can’t even begin to explain it.”

> _His vision blurred and the imagery before him appeared as no more than blown out pixels of ivory as he came in a haze. His body trembled violently as his eyes rolled to the back of his skull, his legs gave out on him as he slowly collapsed onto the back muscles of the other man. His breathing was ragged but he was simply grateful he had survived after having came so hard… but as he felt the man on the coffee table crumbling beneath him, he began to regret merely kissing death._

“I didn’t understand anything that had happened after that. Not that I had understood any of what had preceded it.”

> _After holding his knees against his chest for more than a few moments, the other man stood up from the coffee table and began to quickly redress himself. He didn’t know what to do, how to plausibly explain the odd behaviour, so he simply followed the lead of the other and began to redress as well. He pulled on his pre-cum stained boxers as the other slid into his still clean, fitted boxer-briefs, hopped his way into his work pants and was refastening his utility belt by the time the other found his sweat pants, and was doing the last button of his work shirt as the other man was pulling the hem of his own shirt just passed his belly button._
> 
> _He looked across the room and jumped as he found the once round, viridescent eyes of the other man on him, suddenly narrowed as they had been before he had entered the room with him, studying him as they had been before he had entered the room with him, and he took a step back in faint shock. A few moments passed before the voice of the other man broke the silence that had fallen over the room._
> 
> _“Are you real?”_

“I could never go back to that place after that, after what I had done... so I did what I had to do. I can barely look at myself, let alone my wife.”


	8. Hold the Sun, Hold Life, Hold Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He looked up towards the heavens and prayed for his god to hold the sun for one last time.... and He did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a memory within a memory so it's indented. This chapter is also much lighter as there's very little (none of) Josh within it.
> 
> -Always Editing-

_The lot around them was vacant and void of anything other than dirt and rock; a few weeds had sprouted up after the day’s rain and had broken through the otherwise dry earth but even those little promises of life had already started to wither and dry up, had already accepted their death with the intense summer heat of the island bearing down on them. He could feel the sun burning into his flesh and he could already see his skin reddening beneath its touch but_... _L_ _eaving this behind was not, and would never be an option._

_There wasn't anyone else around or, at least that's the way it had always seemed when the two of them were together. It was just the two of them lying there against the earth, staring up at the sky trying to find familiar shapes of white pressed against the blue backdrop; the houses around them had already fallen into obscurity and nothing beyond the chain link fence that enclosed them within that earthy space existed... The usual sounds of the shearwaters just off of the shores fell to nothing as the sounds of the other boy’s laughter filled the air and the usual imagery of the petrels dancing across water suddenly became nothing more than white paint smeared against a white surface, somewhere in front of him but meaningless and invisible from his vantage point as he found the smile of the other boy. A second passed. Then another. And a third. A fourth and a fifth until the boy wasn't laughing anymore but the crinkles were still set and visible around his eyes. He knew that the other boy was telling him something, could see that his lips were moving and yet there were no sounds passing through them... There never were. It was like the memory dwelled in mute, cursing him to play the spectator and nothing more. Limiting him. Holding him._

_The spaces on either side of where they laid together blurred to messy blotches of colour and the sun seemed to race across the sky for a few moments: shadows approaching them, engulfing them, then passing them within what only seemed to be a matter of seconds until the sun suddenly stopped, seemed to be held in the sky by an unmovable force. They were standing now, bodies turned in towards one another and he could feel the warm breath of the other boy ghosting across the surface of his skin. He wanted to lean in, wanted to feel the lips of the other boy against his own but he found himself chained to his place; memories lie in the past and as much as he wanted to change them, as much as he wanted to take hold of and manipulate those events, he didn't possess that kind of power. So he smiled and he blinked as his attentions fell to the moment. He blinked again, well aware that the boy with sour apples for eyes would still be standing in front of him - holding up a football with eyes bright and daring, challenging - when he opened his eyes again. He knew that he'd lose to the other boy. He always did._

> _((“We’re going to be famous footballers one day, Jacob.” “I know that you will be, Cris. You’re really good.” “So are you.” “I never said that I wasn’t. I’m better than you most days…" he laughed. "Yeah, yeah, yeah." "I just think that I’ll be dead before that ever happens.”))_

_He was only six. He attempted to shake off the memory and looked for something, anything to distract himself but.._ _. He was only six years old at that time, they were only six years old. They were supposed to be feeling_ _indestructible, untouchable at six years old and yet the other boy seemed to talk about death as if it was inevitable at that phase of his life, inevitable for people like him._ _He had always attempted to assure the other boy that they would grow old together, that they would sit side by side in their rocking chairs on a porch somewhere in the middle of paradise, yelling for children to get off of their properties and yet he still found himself chained, shut out by the memory. Damned to forever be haunted by the silence that had followed the other boys remark._

 _His attentions snapped back to the events of the present._ _He watched as the boy with sour apples for eyes juggled the ball between his two legs and felt himself smile as he saw him finally complete the Abbas Around the World he had been working on for the past week. He felt his lips move, felt his throat constrict and the air departing from within himself but even his own words seemed to be soundless. They always were. The boy had laughed at whatever he had said, had dropped the ball and had shoved him to the side while elbowing him in the rib-cage, and suddenly he felt dirt pressing up against his skin, a sharp rock digging into his kneecap. He was laughing. They were laughing. In a heap of arms and legs._

_...and the sun raced across a white streaked backdrop of blue again. A voice broke into the realm of “them” and the smiles disappeared from both of their faces. Their laughter seeming so distant all of a sudden. He reached out and tried to grab the hand of the other boy as the latter found his feet but his hand, his hand went right through the other’s. “Jacob, you can’t…” His words weren’t words. They were merely thoughts, loud thoughts that he desperately needed to vocalize but the memory had barred his mouth shut so he resorted to merely feeling the panic. The voice was growing impatient and he glanced up in time to catch the fear within the irises of the other boy, held his gaze for more than a moment._

_He looked up towards the heavens and prayed for his god to hold the sun for one last time.... and He did. He found his feet and stared into those eyes of green for as long as he could. Memorized every fleck of gold within them and the way the black strands of hair fell against the forehead of the other boy. He could hear the sounds of the chimes as the wind played its soft music for any and all to hear and felt the burning sensation of tears returning to his eyes. He tried to tell the boy not to go, tried calling for his mother and his father but his lips didn’t move. They never did. He tried holding the other boy for one last time, tried to grab his hand but only found air in the space of the body… He turned his attentions towards the origin of the sounds of the voice and the sun raced forward, counting down the minutes in a matter of milliseconds; a void of black greeted him, a shadow of a man and nothing more. He was never anything more than a space of nothing, a void unworthy of a face, a trace of humanity._

_He could see the other boy walking towards the house and he felt himself drowning in despair as the memory defeated him. Still he begged for the other boy not to go in there and still his words fell soundless... but then, then he blinked and suddenly, suddenly the boy with the sour apples for eyes was gone. The light blue shutters of the house crashed into and through the soil of the earth, disappeared and fell into nothing... The paint chipped wood panels on the sides of the house collapsed immediately after, turned to dust and were blown away with the Portuguese winds... The mailbox, the porch, the wind chimes... all of them came crashing down, down, down until lot one thousand thirty-three fell to nothing more than leveled earth. Until he fell to nothing more than leveled earth._

* * *

Cristiano could see Sergio looking at him out of the corner of his eye but he still wasn’t quite ready to talk about all of the... whatever they had just been told. He was still swimming in all of the details and he was still trying to leave the words as just that, trying to suppress the imagery of the alleged events to two dimensional ink while trying to figure out if he could ever confirm them with Joshua. (("Are you real"... "Challenging me" ... "almost like he wanted me to")). It was a lot for him to take in and, for once in his life, he found himself unsure of what he was supposed to do with all of the information he now held within his hands:

>   * **Fireflies** // Plausible coping mechanism  // Definite delusion // Definite usage of external attribution in place of…….
> 

> 
>              ((If patient experiences “fireflies”, attribution of actual events falls to whom?))
> 
>              ((Does patient recall engaging in any form of sexual activity?))
> 
>   * **Ink Blots** // Definite coping mechanism // Trigger sign of experienced disassociation //
> 

> 
>              ((Josh holds ink blots… Who (?) holds the memories?))
> 
>   * **“Alt Personality”** // deals with triggering events // developed as a coping mechanism
>   * **Prognosis/Treatment Plan** : find the who to find the memories, find the memories to find the disruption // medication: no change; medicate as per usual
> 


Josh’s file had been blank and void of anything other than fireflies and ink blots for several years and Cristiano couldn't help but feel... He knew that information was power and the gravity of what truly could be going on within Josh's mind struck the doctor in an unnerving way to put it simply, made him feel uncomfortable and at edge. It was all too familiar, (too familiar) and the thought, the memories sent chills down his spine. He was having an internal struggle, trying to figure out if he should include his notes from his discussion with Gerard within Josh's file or if he should... (No, that's way too much information and I... If I can't figure this out, if I can't help him then this information, it will only leave him vulnerable, too vulnerable to whomever may oversee his care next). He'd heard one too many stories of psychiatrists and psychologists, his colleagues even, using emotional manipulation to take advantage of their clients in any way and he didn't... A person with a disassociative personality disorder was... (No.) So he folded up the scribbles of Gerard's account and shoved them into his pocket for the time being. After a few moments of staring at his "official" notes and entries, he closed Josh's file with a sense of finality and tossed it onto his dashboard; he didn't want to think about it too much for the time being. He yawned and anxiously threaded his fingers through his hair, glancing back at the white paneled, red shuttered home for one last time.

Sergio sighed as he could sense the doctor’s distress; it was becoming toxic and he could feel himself growing uneasy and concerned… “Food always seems to make me feel better,” he offered as he turned the key in the Land Rover’s ignition, smiling as he saw the doctor’s features softening until there was a soft smile on the other man’s face. “See? Even mentioning food seems to make the stress disappear.” He could hear the other man chuckling lightly in the seat beside him and the sound trickled through him. He felt himself catch fire as he found the doctor’s eyes with his own and he did his best to suppress the sudden urge he felt to lean forward and find the lips of the other man with his own. He quickly looked away and distractedly fumbled with the navigation system, reversing the directions on the GPS as he did his best to avoid looking at the doctor any further. “I, uh, I know of a really great diner just near the institute,” he stuttered out as he shifted the car into drive and began heading back to the behavioural health facility. “I usually like to eat there after my shifts but if you don’t want to go...  I mean, I don’t know if they have a good fruit salad or anything.”

Cristiano couldn’t help but laugh as he picked up on the blue font undertone within the other man’s voice and he rolled his eyes as he remembered the rocks beneath the shirt of the security guard. “Oh, so you stick with the Greek yogurt then?” His smile deepened as he saw the flush on Sergio’s cheeks turning to a crimson color. “I haven’t eaten out since I’ve been here," he sighed out honestly as he strapped himself against the seat. "I suppose it’d be nice to eat something that isn’t burned beyond recognition or something that doesn’t show up at my front door in a cardboard box.”

“In that case, I should probably take you out more often.” He didn’t know why he said it; it just sort of slipped out and he was having a difficult time accepting that he couldn’t take the words back. Part of him didn’t want to but another, more grounded part of himself was trying to find a way to reverse the clocks because Cristiano was a psychiatrist at Broken Arrow and he was fairly certain that there were rules in existence against inner-office dating at the institute. He haphazardly glanced at the doctor out of the corner of his eye and relaxed a bit as Cristiano seemed completely unbothered by the content of his words. He actually seemed to be a bit distracted by the city passing them by beyond the window and Sergio wondered how often the other man got out.

* * *

He was still throwing the car into park when someone came running out of the building, arms flailing around in a desperate attempt to catch either his or Cristiano’s attention. Sergio instinctively checked the time and frowned as they had only been gone for about two hours; there wasn’t much talking going on at the diner as they were both famished and ended up having an “oh you’re eating [this much]... I think I’ll take a double order of [this much]” match that had left their mouths full and their stomachs fuller. He wondered what could have happened within two hours as he glanced over at the man in the passenger's seat and found the other man surprised. After a few moments of deciphering the scene, Cristiano moved to get out of the car; Sergio took that as a sign to turn off the ignition.

“Oh, Doctor Aviero! Thank goodness you’re here, I thought you had already left for the day but please, please come quickly. There’s a situation on the fifth floor; Doctor Hernandez has it under control for the most part but there’s no one to take charge of the group session and the other patients are just taking as much advantage of it as they possibly can.” The woman’s words were coming out so quickly that they were running together but she had started panicking when she couldn’t get a hold of any of the other therapists. She had tried everyone she could think of to the point that she was calling their janitorial staff when she saw Cristiano's Land Rover in the lot. 

“You couldn't get a hold of a counselor or something?” Not that he was above leading a group session it was just that… He hadn’t spent hours laboring over books in medical school to pull overtime while doing the level of work that only required an AA degree with tired eyes and a sore stomach. (Part of him wished that he had passed on the magdalenas but he was trying to prove a point to Sergio. Add that to the fact that he hadn’t had anything other than Chinese take out since his arrival in Spain and... It was ultimately leaving him sore but the ache well worth it). He sensed the panic in the other woman and saw it in her eyes so he spoke before she could stutter out something that would probably underline the incompetence of the facility’s counselors, “You know what, Mary? Screw it. I’ll be right up.”

Sergio shook his head and smiled as he closed the driver’s door and walked around to the other side of the car as Mary ran back in under instructions to get security into floor five’s living room as quickly as possible. “You must really love your job,” Sergio chuckled out, watching Cristiano’s eyes widen in amusement as the other man shook his head in seeming disbelief of himself. He tossed the keys to the Portuguese doctor and told him that he could crash in his room if he needed to after he finished his group session as he had spent most of the evening before napping and lazing about the floor.

“You should join me,” Cristiano suggested as they made their way inside, stopping to shake his head at himself as he realized how that must have sounded, “on the fifth floor, I mean. I’m sure you know some of the patients and you can help me keep them in check. Besides, I was kind of hoping to talk to Josh during regular hours so we can...”

“I’ll join you but you’re not talking to Josh,” Sergio stated a matter of factly, not bothering to glance over his shoulder to look at the other man as he had noticed that Cristiano had stopped walking at the words. “You need to sleep. It’s not healthy to go for so long without sleep and it’d hypocritical for you to judge other people for their health when you’re not looking out for your own.” He heard Cristiano chuckling and heard the sounds of his shoes against the pavement, heard him jogging to catch up.

* * *

The floor was the embodiment of chaos - shouts and screams permeating the air, excessive sobbing, and outright barbaric behaviors - and, after recovering from the shock of it all, Cristiano felt relieved and appreciative of the Sevillan's presence on the floor. There was no way he was equipped to calm this kind of insanity unless the facility, by some miracle, would allow him to shoot tranquilizers into every one of those acting out. He settled his nerves and calmly glanced around the room and found a person seemingly drowning in distress, a person who seemed to be at the verge of tazing every person within range of the device, himself included. Cristiano waved his hand in the air and managed to catch his attention and could visibly see the tension falling off of the other man as he saw him and the security "support" standing beside him. Cristiano smiled and then frowned as he threw his eyes around the room again and again. "Where is the rest of the security detail," he shouted over the pandemonium, pushing his way through the madness and towards the other guard, hand wrapped tightly around Sergio's wrist as he felt that anything could happen with this kind of lax supervision on the floor. 

“Those are the kind of questions I'm asking. I think Pepe and Jordi are helping Doctor Hernandez a couple of doors down and Raphael was called to help out on the seventh floor... Everyone else just kind of disappeared and I somehow got stuck with," he glanced around the room and threw up his hands, "all of this." Dani stopped and smiled as he caught Sergio's eyes, pulled the man into an embrace that was way too tight that said "bless your existence, you ethereal being, and bless you for having saved me from dealing with this insanity all by myself." He let the other man go at the count of five and he firmly took Sergio's face within the palms of his hands. "I swear, I never thought I'd be happy to see your stupid face again," he breathed out, laughing as the other man threw an arm over his shoulders and walked with him through the chaos. "It must be intense being all alone up there with that sociopath," he thought aloud as he locked his eyes on a problematic few, "but I guess I get my fair share of intense," he finished observing, pointing out the three patients that seemed to be catalyzing the situation further. 

Within moments, the pebbles that had initiated the tidal waves of shouted madness were removed and the room fell into a calm silence until the patients noticed the change in the midst of them. “Hey Doctor Aviero.” “Doctor Aviero, I need to talk to you about my prescription.” “Where’s Doctor Hernandez?” "Is there any way that I can get in and talk to you today?" “Why is a psychiatrist leading group?” "When is our next private session?" “What happened to all of their counselors?”

“Oh, you haven’t heard?” Cristiano calmy asked the group as he took his seat and started scribbling down and filling in the basic date, time, session type, therapist name garbage on the information sheet. “All of your counselors are now patients of mine. You have successfully driven them up the wall and have caused them all to question their own sanity,” he chuckled out, though he seemed to be laughing alone. He glanced up and found Sergio smiling along with him though. (Good enough). “So where should we start? Daily check-ins? Maybe someone wants to share something positive? Does anyone feel improved or…? No. What about questions regarding your...? You have a question or a...?”

“Yeah,” one of the guys spoke up from within the room as he dug his hands into his sweatpants pockets, “can we talk about how Marc’s relationship with an invisible guy has him wanting to kill himself? I mean, it’s fucking stupid. He’s trying to kill himself over a person that isn’t really there and I… I just don’t get it.”

Cristiano asked a few questions around the room and figured out that Marc was the patient with which Doctor Hernandez was currently engaged and that he had a friend that none of the other patients had ever seen. “Just because you can’t see something, it doesn’t mean that it’s not there. Now I know, I know it's a cliché and you usually hear that with things like the wind but that very thinking you’re using in reference to Marc can be applied to your depression, Luis.” He placed his clipboard on the table to his side and laced his fingers together as he rested his elbows against his knees. “You can’t see it but it has a hold on you, chains you if you will, but they’re chains that only you can see, right? I mean, how many people have told you to **just** get out of bed or to **just** stop feeling the way that you feel before you came here?” He waited as the room mumbled out answers though his question was rhetorical in nature but he was simply happy that they were engaging with him. “...and it's frustrating isn't it. Feeling it, seeing the effect it has on you, but hearing someone tell you to snap out of it because it's all in your head. It’s invisible and "non-existent" to anyone that isn’t you, or you, or you... and it's incomprehensible to anyone who hasn’t experienced it for themselves. The same applies towards people who find themselves suffering from schizophrenia, or from delusions of any kind, anxiety or hallucinations. It’s invisible to everyone but the person, the individual. Invisible but very real and it should never be held or regarded as anything less. Like you, he just needs to be understood before he can be helped... That's why you're both here.”

“I think if you find something or someone else to live for then that would help you along, too,” someone spoke up while pointing to Marc. “It’s what’s helped me with my depression. My family and how they would react, what it would do to them if I just ended it.”

Cristiano nodded but tilted his head to the side and addressed the speaker as well as Luis. “While it may help you temporarily I would advise you to be careful with that kind of... 'solution'. Another person isn’t a permanent fixture within your life, regardless of much you want them to be. Your children: they move out eventually and start to lead their own lives until one day they only call during the holidays. Remember, they're not your crutch and should never bear the burden of being your crutch; it's not their responsibility to care for you as it's yours to care for them. Significant others, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers... People pass away and life happens so there’s a great risk involved in living for another person... You should always want to live for yourself first and foremost. I know it sounds selfish but the facts are that the only permanent fixture within your life isn’t something materialistic, because those things can be lost... It isn’t a person because we lose people all of the time; humans aren't indestructible… It’s you. So between now and... when do you get out of here?” He paused as some of the patients filled in the blank and told him that they had thirty minutes left. “Okay, so in the next thirty minutes, you’re going to make an entry in your journal. It can be one sentence or it can pages, I don't care as this is for you. I want you to write down how you’re going to go about living your life for yourself. Be selfish.”

“I don't understand how my need to be present for my children isn't sufficient enough. I mean, I..."

“Okay then,” Cristiano sighed out, already hating himself for what he was about to say, “I’m going to do something awful then. I’m going to tell you a lie but I’m going to ask you to write from that lie. Your mother has just called and she has informed us that your children and your significant other have been involved in a fatal car accident. Now... Let that soak in and, when it does, tell me why you are going to choose to continue living. Life is a choice and I want you to choose to live, not for another person, but for yourself because I know that that is the only way that you will continue to be okay after I or some other doctor hands you your discharge papers.”

Sergio knows that the lecture isn’t for him, knows that the therapy session wasn’t targeted at himself but it strikes a chord within him. His whole life, his career was centered around other people: helping them, protecting them… He lived for other people to such an extent that he was willing to take a bullet for any of the people under his watch, was willing to take fatal metal for someone no greater than a stranger to him. He had never thought of himself. The thought, the realization left his mouth dry and it made his heart race, his palms sweat and very suddenly, very suddenly he felt the urge to be sitting before Cristiano in more ways than one: as a patient, as a friend, as a lover... He simply felt the urge to pick apart the other man's mind so he could finally place himself, place his reasons to continue living... Or to finally start living. 


	9. Let Me In

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Flawful*

He could still see the patient file gripped tightly within Cristiano’s grasp, could still see the other’s eyes dart to it from time to time and he had found himself in the presence of his mother’s voice, had found himself wondering and had found himself remembering. ((Pay attention to people, my son, because the most important truth a person will ever tell about themselves is seldom told with words. Pay attention to people, my son. Pay attention to the healers that you surround yourself with; far too often the healers are searching for a means to be healed themselves and the protectors...)) He recalled Cristiano freezing before entering the room on the tenth floor only the day before, had recalled the other dropping that very file as soon as his eyes had found Josh, had remembered hearing the beautiful doctor refer to his patient as ‘Jacob’ despite the file naming him as Josh; it could have been a simple slip of the tongue or an easy case of mistaken identity and yet, his behavior after the incident had been curious and his behaviors since translated equally so.

((Pay attention to people)). “So are you ever going to tell me what your deal is with this patient?” He would have cringed as his thought had found itself tied to words less than twelve hours ago but now, now he simply needed to know what Cristiano had saw in Joshua only the day before. He needed to know before he continued putting his job at risk for whatever it was that Cristiano seemed to be searching for, before he allowed Cristiano to continue putting his own license at risk. He liked Cristiano – both as a person and as a doctor – and he loved that Cristiano had trusted him enough to keep him in the loop of what he was doing regardless of protocol but he didn’t, couldn’t look back on this and think he should have been on the other side of the line. “You know you can tell me whatever it is. I mean – shit – we’re this far, aren’t we?” Sure, every doctor wanted the answers but seldom do those doctors ever seem to be searching for their own and never do they conduct their affairs in such an unorthodox fashion – ((...unless things are really done so differently in Portugal)). “I understand that you want to do everything you can to help your patient but... You just risked your job for this guy, your medical license, maybe even your life if Gerard had been any less of a man... I mean, who does that? It’s your second day and you’ve never even held an actual conversation with this guy but you’ll throw all of those years and all of that cash you spent on medical school in the garbage just to know why Gerard left.” He had managed to capture Cristiano’s attentions over the noise of the floor and felt relieved as he realized that the other seemed undisturbed with the subject as a soft smile painted itself on the other’s lips, at ease with the fact that he’d suddenly become quite demanding... but he made no other form of acknowledgement, made no attempt to give him his answer.

He wanted Sergio to be comfortable with him, wanted him to feel at ease with him given the amount of time they’d be spending with one another but he couldn’t find the answer for the other but not for the lack of knowing; they were still on the fifth floor and the patients and doctors, the counselors and guards once missing, the nurses filled the corridor making the space too tight and the noise crowded out his thinking ability. As willing as he was to have this conversation with Sergio, he found himself unable and motioned to their surroundings, hoping that the other understood that “soon, but not now” he’d have his assurances. In the meantime...

Cristiano smiled as Jordi passed them in the halls with a snide remark rolling off of his lips but he left the guard with the other as he desperately flagged down Doctor Hernandez, catching the older doctor just before the other made his way into the elevator, holding up his most precious file to inform him of what was coming next. “Are you sure this is everything?” ((“I’m positive. The kid barely speaks and when he does, it’s nothing but fireflies and ink blots.”)) “It’s nothing but fireflies and ink blots when he’s speaking with us, but what kind of contact does he have with the guards,” and he found himself smiling as those bushy caterpillars the other passes off as eyebrows rise, the intrigue glaringly obvious in the Catalan’s eyes. “He spoke with Sergio about Gerard, the guard who had been running detail on the floor before him, and he even mentioned his parents. Do you know if there were any other guards who ran detail on the tenth floor prior to Pique?” ((“I can’t, I can’t believe it. Well, what did he say?”)) “I guess he thinks Pique is terrifying and he accused him of letting in fireflies. He also believes that his parents put him on a private floor out of some unfounded sense of guilt...” he checked over his shoulder, smiled as he found Sergio momentarily breaking away from his own conversation to offer a nod as confirmation, “...and that’s about it for now. Were there other guards prior to Gerard?” ((“I spend years up there and the kid refuses to talk about anything but fireflies and ink blots; you two spend less than a day up there and he’s talking about parents and a security guard. What has the world come to? ...but no, there were no other guards who were ever allowed to... Wait. Well, there was one guy. Josh was still new to the floor and we were still trying to figure out everything that was going on in his head and the guy, he only lasted about a week or so... He said that the floor was too quiet for him, that it was like being confined to isolation or something like that and he couldn’t take it. Miguel, I think was his name. A young, Portuguese kid fresh out of the academy. I’ll look into it and I’ll send you his details as soon as I can. I have a conference at 1430 and a discharge consult at 1630 but I should be able to get you that information by 1900, 1930 at the latest. I can’t believe you were able to get him to speak.”)) “Hey, he didn’t talk to me,” he laughed out as he finally turned from the other and pressed his way up the hall, ((“...just keep me in the loop!”)) thumb up in reply as made his way towards the stairwell with Sergio nipping at his heels.

He could still feel the Sevillan’s expectant gaze on him as he stepped out into the stairwell and he prepared himself to cave in to the other’s attentions. (Three, two, one...) “Would you stop looking at me like that? I just needed more information – exactly as I had told you before we ever left – and you can’t, I did nothing that would put my license at risk,” Cris stated simply as he gradually made his way up the steps with the Spaniard in tow, smiling innocuously as the other made his way past him in some kind of a huff, “not yet at least.” The security guard was throwing something of a tantrum and it was something close to cute but he didn’t want to patronize the other so he kept himself from smiling and swallowed his laughter, adjusting his badge in a vain attempt to distract himself from the other’s display of discontent. He knew what Sergio was looking for – he had a pretty good idea, at the very least – and he was more than willing to help him in his search, but he also knew that his honest answer would only work against him in the near future. (He knew better than anyone that having a personal interest in a case, in a patient was far from professional and could potentially stand in his way when it came to doing what needed to be done in the name of treatment, but he had already promised himself that he’d step aside and would forfeit the patient if it ever reached that point. He’d been certain that Sergio would reinforce that line if and when he ever reached it but he’d also been sure that Sergio would press forward with reservations as to where that line was as soon as he knew that there was one).

Another huff and he couldn’t suppress the smile any longer, couldn’t throat the laughter. “This file has been near blank for over ten years – a decade! – and I knew I wasn’t going to make anything even resembling progress if I didn’t bend the rules a little bit. You knew that, Sergio. I thought that was why you had agreed to come with me.” He watched as Sergio ran his badge over the sensor and he watched the light flick from red to green, saw the other man turning the handle and rolled his eyes as the Spaniard refused to pull the door open. “You should have told me that you didn’t feel comfortable with what we were doing there. I know I pressured you a bit but if you had decided to wait in the car...”

Sergio shook his head as the silent guilt of the other reached him in full and he hated himself for not having clarified where he had been coming from. “I don’t regret having come with you, Doctor Aveiro; I don’t regret it in the slightest. You’re a great doctor but... If you were to lose your license over this patient, Cris,” and he couldn’t help but notice how the other blushed when he said his name, how soft his lips looked in that dimly lit stairwell, how close the distance between those lips and his looked, “I’d regret everything.” He had realized that he had neglected to mention the repercussions their excursion could have had on his own job but he had realized his negligence a little too late; he was caught in a soft stare and at the receiving end of a grateful smile and he, he couldn’t... He rubbed his palm against the back of his neck and silently prayed his own blushes weren’t as pronounced as they felt as he finally yanked the door open, sucking in more of the floor’s free air than absolutely necessary. The stairwell had been cramped and Cris (Doctor Aveiro had been close; so very close. ((Focus, just focus. Now what was I...)) “It’s not that I don’t trust you and your judgment and it’s not that I don’t have faith in whatever it is that you’re attempting – hell, if all of the doctors here took this much of an interest in half of these patients, the world would be a better place... I just don’t want to see you getting hurt in an attempt to save a ghost.”

The words echoed louder than their footsteps in the empty corridor though he seemed to be walking only through his memories, heard the words intertwining with the sounds of shearwaters and laughter. The mattress turned to sand beneath him and the draft of the air conditioner ran through his hair like the softest Madeiran breeze and he closed his eyes against the memory until he found himself discovered by round, sour apple eyes and the slight tilt at the corner of full lips. ((Who let you in here?)) “Josh isn’t a ghost.” ((“...but Jacob is.”)) He could hear the concern in the Sevillan’s voice as it found him in the empty lot and he traded the bright sight and warm promises of the Portuguese sun for the worry laced gaze of the Spanish guard. Despite the harsh nature of the truth within those three words, despite the way his stomach clenched and twisted at the sounds of them, it all still felt... nice.

((I just don’t want to see you getting hurt)) and his chest filled with warmth as the words reverberated within his mind. As selfish as the thought found him, it was nice to have someone worrying over him, to have someone holding him accountable for what he’s doing and what he’d done. It was nice to have someone keeping him grounded and he found himself burying his better instincts, resisting the idea of further deflection and deciding with the truth he’d always meant to tell.

“When I was growing up, there had been a boy attempting the same just down the street from where my parents had lived.” He felt the mattress sinking beside him and he turned towards the weight, seemingly caught within himself as he found sour apple eyes staring back at him in the place of caramel above the softest of smiles. He looked like home... and yet he smelled of Andalucía. The smell anchored him as he fell into those eyes of emerald, as he fell into himself and into those memories. “We used to do everything together,” and his soul cracked as he attempted the heaviest of smiles, eyes forging fat tears and he’d wanted to wipe them away, wanted to stop them from falling but Jacob deserved every one he’d had and would ever; he’d give him these tears, every tear of his lifetime. “We used to play football with one another in a vacant lot by his house – well, it wasn’t exactly his house…

We used to skip school sometimes just to play but that stopped as soon as we broke Senhora Rosa’s window.” He laughed as the smile of the other deepened to remind him of those dimples. “He did it but I always took the blame because if I didn’t...” and he frowned as the lost looks, as the fear-filled eyes of his memories etched themselves against the features of the one before him, but the feel of fingertips pressing against the outside of his hand kept him anchored, the smell of Andalucía. “His foster parents, they weren’t good people – Portugal was lacking good people in the foster system at that time – but he always managed to smile. Despite the hidden bruises that would show any time he went after the ball, in spite of the welts that would show themselves any time we decided to climb a tree. He always smiled... until he didn’t.

The smile disappeared with the bruises, they stopped showing on his skin and buried themselves some place deeper, covered him in more ways than one and I... I tried but there was nothing I could... My parents, they told me it wasn’t my place and that I was too young to understand what was happening to Jacob, why it was happening and I didn’t know what to do, what else I could do.” Guilt washed over him as he rediscovered emerald eyes; the weight of the past swallowed him despite the sympathetic stare, despite the forgiving smile. He longed for the warm caramel of Camas but fell to the haunting sour apples of Madeira. “It sounds fucked up but I, I actually missed seeing the bruises and the welts... I fucking missed them because after those left... He always had this distant look in his eyes when he’d come outside; it was always like he was seeing the sunlight for the first time, like he was anywhere but there and sometimes, sometimes it was like he’d forget me…

I should have never left him there. I was, I was only eleven years old. I was young and I had dreams. He knew that and he pushed me into them harder than anyone else had ever. ‘Get out of here,’ he told me, ‘get out of here and never look back, Cris. There’s nothing for you here,’ and he forced me into believing that to help me feel better about my decision, but I always knew... I always knew it had been a lie. I left him there – alone – but he, he found me here. I’m convinced he’s here. I just know – I can feel it in my gut – I know he’s in that room, stuck in that head and I just need, I need to know that if he’s trapped in there, I need to know that he’s...” ((safe)). He felt safe as the strong arms of the security guard wrapped around him and he allowed himself to be held as he was chewed up and swallowed by the memory. He buried his head into the crook of a neck, inhaled Andalucía and yet still he found himself slipping, falling prey to the touch of a Madeiran sun, to the sound of childish laughter echoing around an empty lot. He allowed himself to be held as he slipped into the memory, slipped until he found himself home.

Sergio wrapped his arms around the doctor, held him tightly simply because it was all he could think to do as the puzzle pieces started to fall together. Joshua’s features were quite distinctive and he had caught a glimpse of the file, had made out the city of residence, the country and had quickly connected that to Doctor Aveiro’s presence; as insane as it all sounded – and he knew insanity when he had heard it – he believed Cristiano. “I’m sure he hasn’t forgotten you,” he offered as he felt the wet of Cristiano’s tears pressing against the crook of his neck, “I know I never will.” He had forgotten what it was like to hold someone like this, had forgotten what it was like to be needed like this; he glanced around the room and closed his eyes against the reality of it, silently wondered who would hold him like this when his regrets and when his loneliness finally caught him. ((Pay attention to people, my son. Pay attention to the healers you surround yourself with... the protectors as those who stand guardian for some all too often need the most shielding from one, from themselves)). Life doesn’t change overnight. This was something he knew and accepted so he settled for the catch of goose-feathered pillows and the hold of satin sheets, settled for the warmth of the body he held tightly against his chest. He drifted off to sleep with a gentle sigh, a soft smile painted lightly over his lips, spending his last conscious moments imagining that this body and broken spirit was his to hold, his to hold together.

+

He’d been sitting on the floor for the past two hours – or had it been three? – legs crossed with his bag of grapes nestled in the space between, file open and on full display before him. He’d been scowling at the same grouping of letters for the past thirty minutes, had been trying to connect those scribbled words to himself and had found himself an utter failure in the process – words like “delusion”, “disassociation”, “disruption”, and an entire line of letters that seemed to suggest that he had something of an alternate personality – and he popped another grape into his mouth as he furrowed his brows in the direction of the sleeping doctor. He was handsome in almost every way, and he could easily say the same of the guard he had seemed to have fallen asleep with, but he’d never had an interaction with either of them, had never spoken with either and he found himself curious as to what may have caused the young doctor to form such deductions about him. The folded up page within his pocket seemed to hold some kind of sense but the rest of it...

He popped another grape into his mouth, threw one in the direction of the sleeping therapist and frowned in disappointment as he had missed his target (and what a large target it had been). He didn’t like this man’s letters nor did he care for the words they formed. He didn’t mind the little sketches that Doctor Hernandez had drawn, the senseless little fireflies and the random little ink blots; he had actually been rather taken with the man’s artistic ability, with his creativity as he had always presented himself as someone rather boring and flat. He had been delightfully surprised to find something indicative of a personality within the doodles.

Another grape found between his fingers, between his lips, between his teeth and his now freed fingers found the pen that had been left beside the file with his name on it. Paint was usually okay but pens, pencils...? He hadn’t been granted access to those in years and the little tube felt odd between his fingertips. He rolled the writing utility between them for a moment or two, a minute, an hour until he had grown used to the feel of the plastic before he pressed the tip of it against the blank of the pages in front of him. Fleeting flickers of black and then clarity; his head hurt, throbbed. He forced the pen across the paper, frowned as the images unfolded against the stretch of the pages before him, glowered as he held no sense of attachment to them. A barn, a rusted wheel, haystacks, a stuffed bear. (His head hurt, throbbed. Fleeting flickers of black and then clarity). He turned the page, tried to draw something familiar – his doctor, the kindly inked guard beside him, the room – but grimaced as the lines connected to everything but him. A room, candles, calendars, the blades of a ceiling fan, a Mother. (His head hurt, throbbed. Fleeting flickers of black and then clarity). It’s as if the images had always been there, had been hiding in white awaiting ink to find the indentions as he held no sense of control over what the ink would paint next. A bathtub, a bar of soap, a pair of hands and ink, ink, ink. (His head hurt, throbbed. Fleeting flickers of black no longer fleeting...) He closed the file quicker than he could process the action, didn’t bother to consider the scribbled contents nor the tiny doodles as he flung the file and all of its pages across the room in the company of whatever had been settled between his legs. His head hurt and the throbbing pain trapped within it was far too much for him to take.

His vision became riddled with splatters of black: ink blots on the pages, ink blots on his hands, ink blots in his head. Nothing, nothing, nothing. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow the too thick of the air and something, something was stirring within the black of it all. ((How did you get in here?)) His head hurt, throbbed, spun and he’d have given anything just to make it stop for a moment and yet he found himself transfixed as something moved, as something danced within the black. Pain forgotten as he watched in awe. ((Who let you in?)) He was surrounded in darkness, confined by it and forced to watch helplessly as a darker figure swam within his dark, forced to watch and to marvel until little flickers of light pulled him out of his reverie. He smiled and flitted his fingers before them and around them, between them and beneath them. Fireflies. ((Who let you in?))

Cristiano glanced up from where he was standing behind Joshua, concern marring his features as he slowly retracted his hand from the shoulder of the other, recalling the trigger of touch a few moments too late. “Did he say anything to you, Sergio,” he asked, frowning as the other was shaking his head in denial and finding his feet, rubbing the tiredness away from his eyes. ((“I only woke up when that fucking bag of grapes hit me in the face.”)) The Madeiran doctor smiled at the confession, grateful that he had been struck with only the patient file, as he soon re-discovered the settled figure of floor ten. His body was rigid, gaze widened and full of something only he could see, and Cristiano could only speculate over what the other saw before him, could only theorize as he was confined to only this reality and not that of the other’s. He furrowed his brows and could do nothing to suppress the corner of his lip from quirking as he noticed a soft smile ghosted over the lips of the patient. ((What are you looking at?))

The Sevillan glanced around the room and released a sigh of relief as he found all of his assigned equipment accounted for, silently trying to figure out why Joshua hadn’t simply taken either his or Cristiano’s access badges and walked out of this place. It would have been easy and yet here he sat, in the middle of his room – ((I can’t believe I forgot to lock the door)) – in something of a detached state. He was grateful that he had merely been assaulted with a bag of grapes and not something more – something lethal – and he was certainly appreciative that Josh had settled for his room and not the parking lot on his little quest but he was already trying to work out a rational way to explain this in his report without having to acknowledge his gross negligence. ((There’s still a lot of week left)) he decided just before stooping in front of Joshua; he waited for a few moments before he started snapping his fingers in front of the other’s face (to Cristiano’s disapproval, if the look on the other’s face had been anything to go by) and smiled as it seemed to be enough to snap the patient out of his stupor. “I would welcome you back but I suppose you could do the same. I hope I wasn’t snoring too loudly.” It seemed to take a while for floor ten to recognize him but he was simply relieved it had happened, though there had been something still unsure within the look of the other.

((“Are you real?”)) and Cristiano frowned as he, too, stooped before and into the sour apple gaze of the younger man. “That depends. Do you think we’re real,” and he smiled as the other nodded his head although there were still traces of doubt spilled all over his features. “Well, then I guess that’s all that matters.” (“I definitely wouldn’t say that. Hey, asshole, me again. Did you purposely throw grapes at my face?”) Cristiano laughed as Sergio’s accusation reached his ears, shaking his head in disbelief because how anyone could ‘accidentally’ throw grapes at another’s face was beyond him. He realized the true nature of the question when he found the lips of the other forming a confused smile, as he heard the ((“I don’t like grapes”)) tumbling off of them. (“I guess that would explain why you’d throw them but not why you had them in the first place.”) Cristiano watched as Joshua shook his head, listened as he denied ever throwing grapes – let alone having them – and found himself caught in the moment. This patient hadn’t spoken of more than fireflies and ink for over a decade and yet here he sat, in the middle of a guard’s room engaged in a perfectly normal interaction with aforementioned guard, never mind the papers of a patient file and the mass of grapes littered over the floor. It was almost normal... Almost.

He hadn’t meant to stare at Sergio and yet he couldn’t seem to pull his eyes away from the form of the guard, from the grin painting his features. Everyone in this facility, everyone to include himself on occasion, treated these patients as if they were some kind of fragile and broken thing and yet Sergio crouched before this one – eyes looking straight into his in a manner he, himself, perceived as challenging – treating him in a way he supposed the other would a friend, a family member, or even a stranger who was anywhere but here. (“What kind of person doesn’t like grapes? You probably don’t like pizza either... It’s not like I believe you, though. I mean, if you don’t like grapes then what were they doing in the refrigerator?”) He found Josh’s smile and wondered how long it had been since he’d been able to do that, heard his laughter and wondered how long it had been since that sound had escaped his soul. ((“Maybe you like grapes? I guess that would explain why you left them beside your bed but it’s kind of a slovenly thing to do.”)) There’s nothing missing in it; Josh doesn’t present any of the same motions that one who was lying would, isn’t trying to convince Sergio of anything ((“I mean, you have a refrigerator right there”)) rather he seemed to be merely informing him, and yet there are still grapes on the floor, papers...

Cristiano found his feet and glanced around the room in a subdued yet frantic panic, pulling the file back together in haste, ensuring that every page had been accounted for. It was easier to piece back together than most given its lack of size and yet still, he hated that he had been irresponsible enough to leave it within the patient’s grasp, that Josh – some part of him, at the very least – now knew exactly what he had known and had theorized about him meaning he had to now guard against Josh’s plausible futuristic attempts of deflections and dissuasion. ((Of all of the rookie mistakes I could have made, with any of my patients past and present, why now...?)) He’d only himself to blame and he allowed but a fraction of relief to wash over himself as he realized that every page was present and accounted for, that every note he had taken... was not where it should be. He felt around his pocket as if the fabric could stretch or grow, felt around for the scribbled on rectangle and then checked his other three. He then checked them again, and once more before he searched between the sheets and beneath bed. ((Nothing)). He looked to Josh, grateful that he seemed to be distracted in conversation with Sergio. He made a mental note to interrogate Sergio about whatever they had been speaking about before he spoke. “So, I was thinking,” and he prayed he was hiding his panic well as both sets of eyes found him, “that we could go outside today, to the courtyard.” He noted how Josh’s eyes lit up at the idea and found himself frowning as the joy left the younger man’s eyes as quickly as it had come. ((“I’m not supposed to go outside. Doctor Hernandez had already spoken with the dean of the hospital about letting me off the floor and integrating me with some of the other patients. It didn’t go over well.”)) He wanted to ask him how he could possibly know all of that but before the question could be tied to words he found Josh holding a badge of red out in front of him. ((“I’ve only used it once but I...”)) Cristiano noticed the instant he began to trail, noticed the fear within his eyes and he could see that Sergio had noticed, as well. “Except we’re not asking the dean for permission and the two of us are going to be with you every second of the time we’re out there.” ((“What about him?”))

Sergio looked over Cristiano’s shoulder, into the space where Joshua had been pointing and furrowed his brows before quickly rectifying his features. “What about him,” he echoed, glancing briefly at Cristiano before he pressed forward. “Do you not want him to come along?” He turned to find Josh’s gaze piercing through him but he refused to allow the other to call his bluff; he was certain that Josh had borne witness to his confusion but the presence of a third person within Josh’s reality, as Cristiano had been phrasing it throughout the course of the day, didn’t take away from the progress he had made in this one. (“We should probably change into cooler clothes. It’s pretty warm out today.”) He smiled as Joshua finally nodded and clamored to his feet, refraining himself from offering a hand and watched as he made his way out of the room before turning to face Cristiano. “You want to tell me what’s going on?” (“I had decided not to add Gerard’s account to the official file, at least not yet, not until... I had folded it up and had stuffed it into my pocket but now it’s not – fuck! – it’s not in my pocket and I’ve checked everywhere.”) He glanced around the room himself, threw a few of the pillows off of the bed and checked beneath the mess of clothes Cristiano had pulled from within his drawers in an attempt to get him dressed that morning, all to no avail. “...and you think he has it? How do you plan on checking? It’s not like you can search his room while we’re out there because if you leave and they catch me out there with him – alone – then...” He knew he didn’t need to finish his sentence and he soon realized that Cristiano hadn’t wanted him to.

He shook his head because he honestly didn’t know what he had been thinking when the words had first escaped him. It wasn’t as if he could simply leave Sergio out there alone with Josh (because Sergio would almost certainly get fired if they were caught) and Josh only seemed to speak with Sergio or in his presence at the very least. Distractedly, he pulled out one of Sergio’s drawers and started tossing clothes out of it, stopping only when he found a few nice pairs of shorts; he chucked a pair towards the guard as he started undressing, not realizing what he was doing until his jeans pooled up around his ankles and by the time he’d felt the blush rushing to his cheeks accompanied by shame, he’d committed to idea of just finishing what he’d started and found himself standing before the other clad only in boxer-briefs and a tee-shirt. “Are you not coming? I told him to change thinking that he’d put the notes in his pocket or something. If we don’t change now, he’ll probably figure out that we were up to something and he’ll probably never trust us again, let alone speak with us.” Sergio was staring at him but he couldn’t read the depth of the expression; he simply shifted all of his weight onto a single leg as he grew uncomfortable with the attention, unsure of what he should do or what he should say next, if anything. Eventually, he figured he should put on the shorts he had been holding, smiling a bit as the waist hung a bit loose but it had otherwise been a perfect fit.

((“So, are you guys going to – you know? – or will we be going outside now?”)) Sergio had never been more relieved in his life as he turned sharply towards the sound of Josh’s voice, smiling as he looked down at his jeans. “I still have to change into my... Wait, why would you say that?” He glanced over at Cristiano as the latter part of the interruption finally caught up to him and found the doctor’s cheeks to be painted in something of a cherry red colour, lips caught between his teeth. He silently wondered what had caused the doctor to blush so profusely, allowed himself to hope a little as he turned his attentions back on Josh. “We were just changing. It’s hot outside.” ((“Sure, gawking at his incredibly toned ass was absolutely essential to the dressing process. I understand.”)) He shook his head in something of a silent plea to floor ten, dared a glance over to where Cristiano was smirking but the roses of his cheeks had now bloomed and stretched to cover every millimeter of his face, and he couldn’t fight the smirk that formed as Cristiano turned to briefly look at his own ass. “Obviously I wasn’t the only one staring,” and he allowed himself to laugh as Josh smiled once more, as his laughter collided with Cristiano’s. ((“I don’t know if either of you received the memo but I don’t get out too often.”)) He was still laughing, distracted by the fact that floor ten was actually making jokes with him as he started to unbutton his own jeans and let them fall.

Cristiano’s throat ran dry as Sergio’s jeans slipped to the floor and he hated that Josh was staring straight at him, hated that he loved how much he reminded him of home. His smirk seemed to taunt him in the same manner that Jacob’s always had, the gleam in his eyes shimmered all the same, and the way he bit that bottom lip and raised that singular eyebrow…

He wanted to ask him what he was implying with that look but he had already known exactly what he had been saying, heard what he was saying without the burden of sound. Despite what the file said, what the file didn’t say, Cristiano knew that he knew him even though he didn’t know him... They were laughing with one another and Cristiano found himself home, staring into eyes of emerald with a Madeiran breeze combing through his hair and everything was as it should have been. Everything was normal... ((“At least he has an ounce of shame”)) and Cristiano glanced over his shoulder, into the space Joshua was pointing into. Almost. “One of us has to, I suppose.”

+

He spoke but the words never seemed to form of his own volition; his responses seemed almost pre programmed, as if he were operating on some sort of autopilot platform. He smiled and yet the curve seemed a little too light and without string to tie it to anything within – no thought to tug at the corner of those lips, no fleeting feeling to waver the fine line between those lips. There was a body and yet there seemed to be no person, no past, no story.

Cristiano hadn’t heard most of the conversation over the past two, four, six hours but in listening he would have never found what he was looking for within the statuesque being before him; he would have heard the same words Sergio heard, would have been as riddled by the somethings coming out of Joshua’s mouth as Sergio seemed to be, would have been so riddled that he would have missed the nothing behind the words. Josh seemed artificial and reflected, seemed to be missing from the person sitting in front of him but at the same time, at the same time he acknowledged that he hadn’t a clue of who Josh is, of who he was, or who he could present himself to be... but the man from only hours ago, the one that had mocked him as a toned security guard dressed and redressed within their presence.... ((Where did he go?)) Even the laughter was too light and sounded as if it could be missed with the lightest of breezes; he found himself overwhelmed, confused as he had been looking at something more, someone more only hours ago.

Page after page dismissed until he finally switched his beeper to “off” – one, two, five, seven – until he finally silenced his cell as he had found himself unable to pull away from this puzzle bluffing normal, the puzzle bluffing and failing normal as he asked himself why the puzzle even bothered as he’d been sure that schizophrenic or disassociative behaviours would have been normalised by now. ((Where do you hide and how do you know who to hide, what to hide)) and he cringed as he had torn off too much of his fingernail, found the pain just enough to pull him out of his thoughts and back into his reality. He eyed Sergio curiously, found the guard completely oblivious to anything outside of the conversation and sighed as the sun started sinking below the stretch of the horizon. ((“I don’t think I’ve ever had a home; nothing like what you seem to be referring to. You can’t miss something you’ve never had.”)) “How can you be so sure,” and the words were tumbling off of his lips before he had even processed them and he was trading the view of the beauty of the sunset for something ever more beautiful. He hadn’t been sure of what Sergio had asked Joshua but he was certain that those eyes were too round, that the spirit hidden behind them was too young. “Maybe you had something of a home – not necessarily a house but a place that made you feel safe – without ever realizing you had a home.” He shrugged as he traded sour apples for the rich red of his blood, smiled softly as he found this one – (who? He didn’t know) – confused. “Just a thought.”

“I guess I never thought of it that way,” and, in truth, he hadn’t. In retrospect, there had never been a place that made him feel safe but... “there was this person, a friend that I had growing up.” The memory flickered within his mind, painting a soft smile on his lips for but a moment, until the ink blots stained the images and left him in the darkness once more. Fleeting flickers of black and then clarity; his head hurt, throbbed.

Cristiano had wanted to press Joshua further, had wanted to wring every detail out of him regarding this friend from his childhood, but the sun had fallen and the fireflies had come out and with them...

“Be careful,” Joshua whispered as the sheet of black before him seemingly transformed into the canvassed backdrop of the greatest dance he’d ever borne witness to, eyes rounded and amazed as little flickers of light danced before him. “If you want to catch the light, you must be patient, Joshua. You don’t chase it, Joshua – you don’t chase the sun, you don’t chase the light. Let the light come to you and maybe, just maybe you can hold the light for a little while. Maybe it doesn’t have to be so dark all of the time. If you just catch the light.”


End file.
